The Brisbane Floods, One Month Later.

Who pays the ferryman?

Nobody. But I’ll come to that in a minute. But before we get to that……

I’m still getting quite a few e-mails asking how I’m doing and if things are back to normal yet? So I thought today, with it being just over a month since the floods, I’d give you an update.

Brisbane Update.

I can easily give you a general roundup of what’s happened around Brisbane because that’s exactly what our Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman, has done for us on the front page of “Living in Brisbane”, a regular free information leaflet printed by Brisbane City Council.

Here are the highlights of what he said:

• Cleanup trucks have now travelled through every flood affected street in Brisbane at least once and many twice.
• The floods struck 12,000 homes and 2,500 commercial properties.
• It wrecked Brisbane’s CityCat ferry service and sewerage treatment plants causing raw sewage to flow into the river creating ongoing health hazards which remain today.
• The council have prioritised public safety and reopening roads.
• 220 industrial bins were distributed and 30 temporary dumping locations were established.
• 110,000 tonnes of rotting furniture, food and debris have been dumped in landfills in the last week, this is equivalent of one third of all rubbish dumped in Brisbane each year.
• 800 Australian Army soldiers joined the cleanup.
• They were assisted by more than 23,000 volunteers during cleanup weekend on 15th and 16th January.

He then goes on to say that “The cleanup is well underway and Brisbane is again open for business, but full recovery will take time and we must continue to help each other through this terrible ordeal.”

Now, what about that ferryman?

Remember this?

If you watched the video on my post called The Brisbane Floods From A Western Suburbs Point of View, you will have seen the flooding across this main road which leads to Mt Crosby, Karana Downs and then Ipswich.

Well it was bad enough for us being isolated and not able to go anywhere. But what about the people who couldn’t get home? There were about 50 cars parked down this road waiting, hoping that the water would recede so they could get to their homes.

But I can tell you this road was impassable from Tuesday afternoon until Friday. So these people were now isolated in the same place that we were, it was pouring with rain and they had no chance of getting home. Until, that is….

Mystery man!

Some quick thinking old fella turns up with his boat. Take a closer look….

My thanks to The Local Bulletin for that story and I’m sure there are lots of people who have many, many thanks for the man with the boat and a big heart.

Local Update.

Still no local shops and not much sign of them being ready for business again until probably April. And that goes for our only local watering hole too, so we can’t even pop out for a beer and it’s still 10 to 15 minutes drive for us to get just about anything.

Wivenhoe Dam Update.

Any of you who have read my guessathon post called Why Did Brisbane Flood? will know that in the past, the dam has been used to store a maximum amount of drinking water of between 60% and 70%. But since January of last year that was raised to 100%.

Obviously, the more drinking water you store in the dam, the less room you have for flood mitigation purposes. Well, over the weekend, Seqwater changed the dam operating procedures again and over the next two weeks will be releasing 25% of the dam’s water levels to reduce it to 75% for drinking water storage.

Just to put that into perspective, 25% represents a years worth of supply for this city.

What’s the phrase? Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted?

But is this an admission that they got it wrong? Certainly not! A spokesman said something along the lines of “even if the dam had have been bone dry, Brisbane would still have flooded due to the unprecedented levels of rainfall”.

Oh, that’s all right then. For a minute there I thought…… no, nothing!