Roma 2012 flood beats 2010 record

If I thought yesterday was a crazy day, then it was clear I’d aint seen nothing yet. As of yesterday evening, Mitchell was in a bad way and Roma was predicted to get moderate flooding. This was before it rained all night across the west. Text alerts were sent out at 5am to say the situation was worsening in Roma but I didn’t get it as the Victorian-designed system is based on billing address and my bills go to Brisbane. I got up at 6am and set off to check out the water. I arrived at Charles St Bridge over the Long Drain (extension of the Bungil Creek) in time to watch police close it.

The creek was 6.6m and rising. I went into the 7am Disaster Management Group meeting where the BoM predicted a height of 7.5m for the Bungil. This meant major flooding on a par with the April 2011 event where 50 houses went under but nowhere near the 8.1m catastrophe of March 2010 when over 200 houses were inundated. Mitchell was still bad after last night with 400 people in shelters. I went out to have a look for myself, not confident the BoM was right. There was a lot of water in the flooded area already, sandbagging was proceeding furiously and I was hearing of massive falls in the catchment.

My experience of watching Roma going under, now six or seven times (I’ve lost count) in two years, told me this was bad given there was a lot of water to come. Many people in the flood zone seemed to agree and most were scrambling to move belongings to higher ground.

There were a lot of roads cut off and as I drove back to the office I heard the BoM tell the ABC, the new prediction was 8.1m – exactly the same as 2010. This was a disaster in the making.

Worse was to come at the office. I heard from the Toowoomba Chronicle scanner a woman and child had been washed off the Northern Road. I immediately drove as close to the scene as I could get. I parked my car and watched as fire trucks rushed away from the scene.

I hitched a lift through the flood and rang back to the office for them to collect the car. I was worried it would go under and I would not be able to get back in time. When I got to the scene of the accident I asked eye-witnesses what they knew. I eventually found people who saw the whole thing. A woman, with her son, tried to drive through the floods to get to the Northern Road. Onlookers waved at her frantically to get her to stop. It was too late, the car flipped and the woman and son were washed out of the car. I was told they were both rescued and made my way back through the floods to town. It wasn’t easy. I fell over ruining a work camera which got saturated.

I posted my third or fourth web update of the day to say the pair were rescued only to immediately find out my information might not be right. Someone I know rang up frantically to say the woman worked at her place and asked what I knew. I told her I thought she was safe but that wasn’t what she was hearing. I rang the police but they could only say they were “still getting to the bottom of it.” I had a cold feeling I was wrong. The creek was still rising. I went out again only to drop a second camera in the rising waters. Surely this was greater than 8.1m?

At 4pm I attended another Disaster Group Meeting. 8.5m was the new prediction which was “uncharted territory” in the scary words of the BoM expert. Police also confirmed the woman was still missing (as was the car) but the son was safe. They were calling off the search as the number of urgent calls went crazy. With a sick feeling, I went back to the office to retract my earlier version of the story before heading out again. The flood boats were still taking people out of the danger zone.

Now the water was coming down McDowall Street where all the shops were. This didn’t happen in 2010. Water was lapping the fire station and businesses were sandbagging. Water still had to come down from upstream and it was still raining. Where would it all end?

The creek finally peaked at 8.5m. With the worst over it was time to hit the recovery centres. There were two. The Rec Centre was where people could sleep and the RSL Hall where they could eat. There people were tucking into KFC provided free by the local store. I suddenly remembered how hungry I was and joined the party.

Back on the street, emergency services were mopping up for the night. There were still some who needed help like 10 people stuck on the roof of the Overlander Motel. Charleville and Mitchell were still in crisis and Roma had now joined it. Surat and St George downstream will face the music next. The one bright moment of a horrible day is when I bumped into Nev Clem. Nev found this poster in the flood zone. Did I want it, he asked. No, but I want your photo, I said. Nev obliged, showing Defiance to the world. It will be a quality Roma and western Queensland will need in abundance in the difficult days ahead.

Mitchell gets near record flooding

Huge rainfall totals have cut off Mitchell, 90km west of Roma (570km west of Brisbane). The situation is worse than 1990 and getting close to the 1956 record flood. Unlike the big commercial TV stations such as Channel 10 I did not have the luxury of a helicopter to check it out (landing apparently contrary to local council directions). I was in Roma running a solo operation trying to put out the following day’s paper, attending disaster management group meetings, trying to get a sense of what was going on through discussion on our Facebook page and updating our webpage with new information during the day.

We got some great pictures, through Facebook contacts. First, by contrast, this is the Maranoa River at Mitchell last Saturday, looking east towards Roma. I took this photo when I though the river was up.

But it was nothing compared to how it looked today. This second photo was taken by Jamielee Dodd in Mitchell around 8am today looking east to the bridge across the swollen Maranoa River.

This next one is by taken by Katrina Henry around the same time, 8am but from the other side of the bridge looking back to Mitchell. The river was at 8.2m at the time – around the same height as the 1990 flood.

This one is from Deb Maiore taken at 9am at the bridge. With water still coming down from Currawong, 4 hours upstream, the State Government declared Mitchell a disaster area. An evacuation centre was set up at the RSL Complex at the western edge of town.

Mitchell was cut off and with heavy rain still falling, the water reached 8.75m at the Mitchell Bridge at lunchtime. Fifteen homes had water over the floorboards with another 40 to 50 houses expected to suffer damage in a peak of 9m (0.8m higher than 1990). With more rain and water still to come down from Currawong the Disaster Management Group, worried the RSL would be cut off from the rest of town, made the decision at their 2pm meeting to move the evacuation centre to the Council Depot immediately. This is another Deb Maiore photo.

This final pic is from Maranoa Regional Council showing the extent of the flooding from the air (not sure what time). Mitchell is to the right of picture, the river to the left and the camera is facing south. While the river gauges have been steady since around 4pm, rain is still falling heavily (as here in Roma).

Local grazier and upcoming council election candidate Kent Morris told us there was heavy rain upstream this afternoon. “The river is rising again at Currawong tonight, expect to see the Maranoa start rising again around 11pm,” Kent said. The worst may not be over. It could be a long night ahead. and Mitchell holds its breath as to what will happen next. Downstream at St George could be in trouble too, especially when the waters from the swollen Balonne (via Surat) add to the mix. I’ll find out more at the 7am disaster management meeting.

Leao survives the Brazilian floods alone

‘Neath her hind feet as rushing on his prey, The lordly Lion greets the God of day.’
– Aratos

This dog is Leao. His custodian Cristina Maria Cesario Santana died in the landslides in Brazil that killed hundreds a week ago. Santana and Leao lived in Teresopolis near Rio de Janeiro where the human death toll from the landslides is 785 with 40 percent buried in Teresopolis. The nearby city of Nova Friburgo founded by Swiss emigrants in 1819 fared even worse with 365 deaths. Both cities are in the Região Serrana of Rio de Janeiro state in south eastern Brazil 60km north of Rio.

Região Serrana means “mountain district” and many dwellings in the region are exposed to landslide hazards due to the steep terrain. On January 11 it started to rain heavily in the region. In Teresopolis 144mm fell in 24 hours, more than the average for the month of January. The downpours caused rivers to break their banks and triggered landslides. It knocked over bridges, houses, churches and the entire downtown area of Novo Friburgo. Around 6000 people were made homeless and 8000 went to shelters while authorities assessed the risk of more mudslides. The death toll rose to make it Brazil’s worst ever natural disaster. Further rainfall over the weekend slowed rescue efforts. Troops, police forces and thousands of volunteers searched for survivors and recovered bodies while air force helicopters transported food and water to families stranded in rural areas without communications.

The San Antonio river burst its banks, submerging buildings, while the rainfall set off several mudslides sending entire shantytowns washing through the city streets below. Brazil’s saturated urban centres are littered with poor-quality homes built informally on precarious inclines. As the Christian Science Monitor said the correlation between Rio’s favelas and its jagged hills is so strong that morro (hill) is a common synonym for “slum,” and asfalto (asphalt) stands for the higher-quality neighbourhoods below. Teresopolis Mayor Jorge Mario Sedlacek called it a huge catastrophe. Watchdog group Contas Abertas said the federal government budgeted $263m for disaster prevention last year but only spent $82m. Only 1 percent went to Rio state while 54 percent went to Bahia, a state with no major disasters, because the minister in charge of disbursing funds was running for governor there. It is part of a long tradition of political corruption in Brazil. 

Not much is known about Cristina Maria Cesario Santana. She was one of Teresopolis’s 138,000 inhabitants and one of 316 people who died there. Television images from the town showed cars submerged by water, buses and trucks with water up to their windows, homes destroyed and tearful survivors surveying the carnage. One resident described the scene as being “like a horror film” and said she saw a baby “carried away by a torrent like a doll” as the child’s mother tried in vain to save it. Christina’s tan crossbreed dog Leao somehow survived. His picture mourning Cristina has reverberated across the world.

The promises of new Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff have reverberated less but are more important in the long run. Rousseff pledged a swift relief effort but will have to confront major flaws in emergency planning and disaster prevention. She said the disaster was caused by decades of lax oversight by municipal authorities who allowed poor people to build houses on hillsides vulnerable to landslides. “Building houses on high risk areas is the rule in Brazil, not the exception,” she said. “You have to get people away and into secure areas. The two fundamental issues are housing and land use and that involves putting proper drainage and sewage systems in place.” Many people living in flood-prone areas say they have nowhere else to go. Like Leao, the problem of the favelas is not going to go away any time soon.

Sri Lanka starts to recover from its major flooding

As Australia cleans up from devastating floods, attention is moving to other major floods zones across the world. One of the worst is in Sri Lanka where flood waters are starting to recede in eastern and northern-central parts of the island. Water levels are falling but monsoon conditions will last until mid-February. Low lying areas in Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa were flooded due to torrential monsoon rain from Saturday, 8 January with 300mm falling daily in five days of intense rain. More than a million people were temporarily displaced and 43 people were killed.

(photo:Sri Lankan disaster management centre)

Yesterday the country’s disaster management centre reported over a million people were affected. As the waters recede people have started to return home and 51,423 displaced people remained in 137 camps. This is adding to an already difficult situation in the north where 20,000 refugees remain in Government-run camps since the end of the Tamil Tiger conflict in 2009.

UN Assistant Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Catherine Bragg will arrive in Sri Lanka tomorrow on a three day mission to supervise relief operations and to launch an international appeal for funding. Bragg said her mission would highlight Sri Lanka’s humanitarian needs and she would advocate for the vulnerable. The UN said it supported the Sri Lankan Government as it provided emergency supplies such as safe drinking water, food, sanitation and emergency shelter.

The floods have destroyed half of the harvest in the eastern province and will have a severe impact on agricultural livelihoods in a region still suffering the effects of the 2004 tsunami and recovering from the decades-long conflict. Over 200,000 acres of paddy cultivation have been destroyed and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said food prices would rise after the floods destroyed rice and vegetable crops. “We have a buffer stock of rice that is good for three months,” said Amaraweera. “That means there will be no immediate impact on the price of rice, but vegetables are already going up in price.”

A UK Foreign Office travel advisory said access roads in the east are impassable. Areas in the central province such as Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Badulla have experienced earth slips. Drinking water is now scarce and there is a danger of water-borne diseases.

Sri Lankan aid workers say there could be outbreaks of dengue fever and cholera. Buried landmines left over from the civil war may be dislodged by flood waters. UN humanitarian coordinator in Sri Lanka Neil Buhne told AlertNet basic aid was still required and health risks were high. “A lot of people affected were quite poor to start with and now they don’t have much, so there is a serious need to support them when they move back,” Buhne said. “We are particularly concerned about food as these communities are pretty vulnerable and their food stocks have been destroyed so their usual source of income won’t be a source of income for a while.”

In the eastern town of Kattankudy, hundreds of flood victims besieged a government office yesterday complaining about unfair distribution of emergency food aid. The angry crowd attacked three officials. “Officers were called in and we managed to bring the situation under control,” said a local police spokesman. “A decision was then taken to distribute aid through cooperative stores rather than government offices.”

The capital Colombo has been unaffected. The Christian Science Monitor is hopeful the floods will aid the reconciliation process with the Tamil north. In his initial tour of flood-hit areas President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited Singhalese farmers but ignored Tamil areas. However with army troops rescuing civilians, distributing food and building temporary shelters, Rajapaksa said the government was sparing no expense. “The relief operations are going ahead and I have told the officials to ensure that there are no delays in distributing aid.”

Life During Wartime: Queensland floods 2010-2011

It’s no wonder Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said her state was like a war zone. What Queensland endured in the last three weeks was war with constantly changing battlegrounds as Nature did battle with life across over a million square kilometres. Around 70 towns and about a quarter of a million people have been directly affected and millions more indirectly.

As of Saturday night 16 people were confirmed dead and 15 more are missing, washed away by nature’s heavy artillery. Among the dead were Donna Rice, 43 and her 13-year-old son Jordan swept off the roof of their car in Toowoomba. Jordan Rice has become an on-line hero for insisting his younger brother be rescued ahead of him. Meanwhile three members of one family died when Fire Truck 51 of the Rural Fire Brigade became inundated on the Gatton-Helidon Rd. Two others on the truck escaped. (photo from Toowoomba flood:Wikipedia)

The others who died were in Grantham, Murphy’s Creek, Marburg, Dalby and Durack. The Lockyer Valley took the brunt of the savage attack. All that water ended up in the Bremer River causing havoc in Ipswich before heading on to Brisbane where it flooded riverside suburbs and creeks on Wednesday and Thursday. The city shut down and emergency workers took over. No-one batted an eye-lid as Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale threatened vigilante justice of turning looters into “flood markers”. A more profound reaction was shown today with reports of over 7,000 volunteers showing up to help clean-up.

One of the saddest sights in the Brisbane floods was the footage of the floating pontoon floating down the river. It felt and looked like a funeral. A barge was there to act as cortege as it moved slowly and sombrely down towards the sea. The pontoon is a structure I remember with fondness. I used to often cycle along its path, when it linked New Farm with the Howard Smith Wharves under the northern side of the Story Bridge (a site where a planned hotel might no longer be so attractive an option).

The pontoon at the bottom of Merthyr Road was the best part. It was exhilarating to be on a bikepath near Brisbane River’s thalweg. You were part of the water traffic and if you were foolish enough, you could attempt to race the Citycats as they glided past elegantly at 20 knots an hour.

On Thursday morning the pontoon dashed past at 25 knots as it broke clear of its moorings in the height of the flood. The Brisbane River peaked around 4am at 4.46 metres. The combination of water down from the ranges, the necessary spill-offs to save Wivenhoe Dam, and a king tide pushing water in from the coast put too much strain on the design and off it went towards Moreton Bay. The flood was high enough to do great damage but was a metre below the 1974 record peak experts thought at one stage it was going to break.

As someone with a ground floor unit in a street that got some flooding in 1974, that news was a personal relief. Elsewhere the destruction was intense. Mayor Campbell Newman said the Brisbane River transport infrastructure had been “substantially destroyed” and 20,000 homes flooded in the city’s sixth biggest flood in its 170 year history. Those who lived through the last big one in 1974 like John Bermingham have it branded in their memories as a “warning from the west”.

Wivenhoe Dam was one answer to the 1974 flood. In 2011 engineers had to open sluice gates that contributed to the inundation but who knows what might have happened this week if it had not existed. Its role has re-opened the debate over dams with an alliance of far left and centre-right libertarians against environmentalists believing it may be time to consider more dams.

Another question is the role of politicians and media. Premier Anna Bligh was praised for her disaster response but her role of Premier became that of communicator-in-chief and the bearer of bad news. Flanked by silent politicians and police chiefs and a communicator for the deaf, she did what she does best which her mastery of the detail.

The commercial TV stations shamelessly tried to turn themselves into the story but old-fashioned ABC Local Radio was consistently the best outlet for news. Unlike the 24-hour television stations it didn’t need pictures to sell the stories and it used its wide network of reporters to link with goodwill from listeners. Newer media showed their value too. The Queensland Police Service Facebook page became a vital and well-updated cog in the delivery of important information and just as important, the quashing of rumours. Many rumours emerged on Twitter which was its usual chaotic self but the #qldfloods hashtag was also a goldmine of some astonishing images from the flood regions.

Also on Twitter was the self-serving “prayforaustralia” hashtag which trended across the world during the “war”. Far better for those people would have been to contribute to a flood appeal. Not necessarily a Queensland one (or Australian – the warzone spread to NSW and Victoria) but also to the more needy who have suffered in less reported but even more devastating floods in Brazil or Sri Lanka. As in any war, the poorest always suffer the worst.

Brisbane’s turn to face the Queensland flood crisis

Three-quarters of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone – an area about 1.3 million sq km, roughly the size of Peru. The devastation is heading to Queensland’s largest population centre, with a major flood predicted to peak on Thursday. Brisbane has had it coming. (picture of flooding in Ipswich today courtesy of the Toowoomba Chronicle)

It was different in January 2010 when a parched Brisbane had 40.2mm of rain for the entire month. It was the back end of a 10-year El Nino Southern Oscillation weather pattern that was about to break spectacularly. February (272mm) and March (162mm) had high falls. The back end was worse still – October had 306mm and December 479mm. Twelve months on and La Nina now in her element, things have changed drastically. In total, 1658mm fell in 2010 (the highest since 1974) and we are in for a repeat this summer. After dry days in the new year, 41.8mm fell on Thursday. There was another 35.6mm on Friday and 23mm over the weekend. Yesterday, the monsoon dumped 110.8mm in 24 hours – three times what fell in January 2010.

Brisbane’s rainfall pattern was repeated through southern and central parts of the state. After a drenching from October to Christmas, the soaking catchments were unable to deal with the deluge on Boxing Day after Tropical Cyclone Tasha. On 27 December (the day I tried unsuccessfully to return after Christmas to Roma from Maryborough), flooding broke out across the state. Dalby and Chinchilla, towns I needed to get through, went under. So did Warwick. All three are in the Murray-Darling basin and they sent walls of floodwaters downstream to Condamine, Surat and St George. In flat country it could take many weeks for it to inundate parts of NSW further south.

North of the Great Dividing Range, there was havoc on two other river systems, the Burnett and the Fitzroy. North Burnett towns Eidsvold, Mundubbera and Gayndah all flooded and the water made its way to Bundaberg where streets around the rum distillery went under. Further north, tributaries of the Fitzroy started filling up. The Dawson River rose so high, all 450 people of Theodore had to be airlifted to safety. The Nogoa River reached record levels with Fairbairn Dam over 100 percent capacity. The dam could not save the nearby town of Emerald from intense flooding.

The Nogoa, Dawson, Comet and McKenzie come together to form the Fitzroy in the largest river catchment to flow into eastern Australia. Sitting near its mouth, Rockhampton was the next place to bear the burden with the town closed off and the Fitzroy peaking around 9.4m last Wednesday.

Still the rain kept coming. It was the Mary River’s turn on the weekend, a fourth river basin flooding causing major flooding in Kilkivan, Gympie and Maryborough. Then the focus turned back south with the news of Toowoomba’s horrific flash flooding yesterday so graphically captured in this incredible amateur video.

Torrents of water gushed through town sweeping cars and vegetation aside. Much of the water rushed down the ranges into the vulnerable Lockyer Valley. Withcott, Murphy’s Creek and especially Grantham had no chance as an eight-meter high “inland tsumani” rushed by, tearing houses apart and stacking cars on top of each other, killing many people.

Back on the ridge, towns like Warwick, Dalby and Chinchilla were getting ready to face the floodwaters again – this time possibly even higher than before. I saw the Balonne River at Surat 6kms wide on Saturday, after the first flooding. It is receding now but can expect to get even bigger with the next lot of floods predicted to arrive on January 18.

(Surat from the air last week. Photo: Maranoa Regional Council)

Brisbane, with a quarter of Queensland’s population, has been watching the growing flood crisis as it got steadily closer. Wivenhoe Dam, built after the devastating 1974 floods, was straining to keep its level at a seemingly impossible 175 percent full. It is pumping record amounts of water through five gates but is still increasing. Released water is heading towards Ipswich and Brisbane. Allied to heavy local rain and king tides, it is preparing a muddy cocktail for the capital. Worse still if the waters ever overtop the dam, it would make Grantham seem like a picnic.

But even sober predictions make grim reading for Brisbanites. Premier Anna Bligh has conceded it will be the city’s worst flood since 1893, with 40,000 properties at risk when the Brisbane River peaks on Thursday. They have set up evacuation centres and shut down the CBD adding to the economic impact of the crisis. The Aussie dollar fell 2 cents today against the greenback.

Here in Roma we are far from the world’s stock markets and surprisingly free from flooding this time round. At the top of the Murray-Darling basin there is little upstream water to worry about and the rains have mostly missed us out. Surat is a different story but there is a common thread as both towns become isolated due to the flood crisis to the east. Supermarket shelves are empty and there is no chance of re-supplies for weeks to come. This is the “invisible flood” where businesses suffer despite having no waters through their premises. It makes for less emotive television but the impact is almost as severe. The Maranoa local government region is not yet a flood-declared council so it misses out on flood relief. Many other western regions will face similar issues. Dealing with these issues will cause authorities many headaches in the months to come.

My day in the floods

For now you can call me the Western Star’s overseas reporter. I had intended to drive back to Roma on Monday after a very wet Christmas with friends in Maryborough. Normally it’s a straightforward if dull five and a half hour drive of about 520km. But Monday was never going to be a straightforward day.

(photo: Jimbour Creek around midday Monday)

The Bureau of Meteorology told me there was a nasty storm cell heading from exactly the direction I was travelling. The Department of Main Roads told me the Wondai-Chinchilla road was closed as was the Warrego Highway near Chinchilla and in the town itself. I passed Charley’s Creek in Chinchilla on the day before Christmas Eve and it was lapping the bridge. It was no surprise to hear it went over.

Yet knowing all this I set off in blind hope. Maybe the information is 24 hours old, I thought. Maybe it will be down by the time I get there, I rationalised optimistically. Maybe I could still get through via Tara or Condamine. So I set off around 9.30am with extra provisions given to me by concerned friends and set off along the highway. The Bruce Highway south to Gympie was busy as always and I scuttled along at 80kph. I turned off at Bauple and headed towards Kilkivan and Goomeri where the traffic was less but the rain was now quite intense. That was the first mistake. I should have continued down the Bruce and holed out at my place in Brisbane.

My second mistake was not listening to the radio. I was playing music oblivious to the gathering crisis ahead of me. When I travelled about 250km to Wondai, I saw the first sign that said “water over the road”. The creek at the northern entrance to town had burst its banks and I carefully treaded my way through the centre of the road sending water flying in all directions. It would not be the last time I did this.

I saw the Chinchilla turn off and although there was no ‘road closed’ sign I didn’t want to risk it. It was 160km of nothing and I hated the thought of getting 100km or more and then having to turn back. So I took the detour via Kingaroy and Dalby. This would add about 80 to 100km to my journey but a safer option I thought.

The rains continued to pummel down. I got about 40km north of Dalby to the little town of Bell when my heart sank. Without any warning the road to Dalby was closed. There was a right turn still open to Jimbour which I knew lay north of the Warrego Highway somewhere. So I started to drive to Jimbour. The fun started here. There were several creeks that had burst their banks and I had to gingerly tread my way through them. I got to the very edge of Jimbour where I saw the Jimbour Creek. It had burst its banks severely and was rushing over the bridge in dangerous looking fashion.

A 4WD came the other way and carefully crossed the bridge. The driver stopped and talk to me at the other side. “What do you reckon my chances are?” I said. “I wouldn’t do it in that little rocket,” he said with a sideways glance at my tiny Kia Rio. Any other way through?” “Nope, apart from the road back to Bell and that won’t be open much longer,” he answered. He went off and I got out to chance the creek on foot. It was, as he said, too dangerous for my “rocket”. I hurriedly got back in the car and drove the hazardous route back to Bell.

I stopped in at the Bell pub and asked them what was the story with the closed road to Dalby. “I came up there a half hour ago,” one woman told me. “But it was in a 4WD.” Another said I would be alright if I could get past Cattle Creek 5km south of down. “If you can see the cement on the bridge, it is still safe to cross.” “But I’d do it now if I were you, it’s still rising.”

So, I decided to chance it. I crossed the “road closed” sign, breaking the law in the process as I later realised. If a cop saw me on the other side, they were perfectly entitled to give me a ticket – something I was unaware of that morning. I got to Cattle Creek and had to cross the most dangerous stretch of water yet. The bridge itself – and its cement – was still visible but the water had cut cross across in a different spot and it was more hazardous than anything I had encountered on the Jimbour Road.

Once I got across I gave a whoop of delight thinking it would be plain sailing to Dalby. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were several more burst creeks to contend with and the closer I got to Dalby the worse they were. Once particularly long stretch had my heart in my mouth as the car bobbed from side to side but luckily I didn’t stall. I was just 5km outside Dalby and though I had made it when I saw the tall mast on the northern edge of town. The signs weren’t encouraging though as the fields on both sides of the road were turned into lakes. Finally I got to a point where a convoy of cars was stopped ahead of me.

I got out to take a look. It wasn’t a creek crossing but simply a place where the raging waters burst over the road and on to the field on the other side. There was no height marker but a bent post had scared the drivers ahead (also in 2WD vehicles) enough to stop. I got out to walk across. The water came up to my knees and beyond. There was a very strong current that wanted to pull me into the field.

I agreed with the other drivers this was the end of the line. One had already called a tow truck and when it arrived the driver told us there was at least three or four such crossings still to go. “And one of them is even worse than this one,” the truckie said. Immediately the other three of us in line asked to be towed as soon as he could come back. It would cost $120 but worth every penny as I didn’t want to be in these rising waters a minute longer than necessary.

We watched as a parade of 4WDs made the crossing. One 2WD came up behind us and made as if he was going to give it a go. We all watched intently sure he would be dragged off in the field. At the last moment, he must have realised this too and pulled out. We spent an hour or two in an agonising slow wait for the truck to return while the islands of road receded and the oceans of water rose. I went back to my car and turned on ABC local radio. The news was unrelentingly bad. Dalby was cut off in all directions. Chinchilla Creek was still rising. England were smashing the Aussies in the cricket in faraway Melbourne where miraculously it wasn’t raining.

(photo: the end of the line 5km north of Dalby yesterday)

It was clear I would be spending the night in Dalby. Then I heard something that made me change my mind. The radio said Myall Creek in Dalby was still rising and expected to peak at 11pm. There was talk of evacuations. What was the point of spending the night in Dalby if I was going to be washed away? Maybe I should try and get back to Brisbane via Kingaroy. At least I would have a dry bed for the night. I canvassed this idea with the others. They all thought this was silly. “In any case the Nanango is cut off the other side of Kingaroy,” someone said. Undeterred I asked the latest arrival, “Can you get still back to Bell?” “just about,” I was told laconically. So I hopped back in the car and did a u-turn and started to drive north again. The creeks I had passed were getting more swollen. I passed through two very dangerous ones, heart in mouth and car in first gear revving slowly through the waters.

Third time unlucky, I stalled. I jumped out of the car and gamely pushed the car out of the flooded creek. Water sloshed all around me and by fierce effort and pumping adrenalin I succeeded in pushing the car back on to dry land. The floor of the car was soaking wet, my thongs had disappeared into the floodwaters. I was stuck and on a closed road, far from help in any direction.

I cursed my impetuous change of plan. I could see another flooded stretch about 400m ahead and decided to push the car onwards to get to the other side of that. I would have pushed my car about a kilometre in total. I was totally stuffed at the end and the car still would not start. A couple in a 4WD gave me a spray to dry off the motor. They also told me there was further dangers ahead. “How is the Cattle Creek?” I asked. “You won’t make that, there is a creek up to .4m down the road,” they said.

I was resigned to a night in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rising waters. After starting the car about a million times, it miraculously revved into life on the million and first go. I cheered up and started north again. I got to the .4m crossing – I could see the measure and they weren’t lying.

But I trudged through it anyway. Amazingly I made it through. Just the Cattle Creek to go, I thought. Sure enough it had risen, but nothing like the peaks I had already negotiated. I was finally free from my nightmare. So what, Nanango was closed but I thought I would cross that bridge (or not) when I came to it. I refueled in Kingaroy and asked the attendant about options back to Brisbane. “The Dingo Creek at Wondai is up,” he said (I remembered this as the very first watery experience of the day which seemed like aeons ago. “Nanango is out too but you may be able to get through the back way,” he said.

So I set off for Nanango 21km away on the main highway back to Brisbane. The rain had stopped now but it was late afternoon and I was worried about being in floodwaters after dark. I got through town and then saw the creek. It was completely impassable. But authorities here were prepared. There were yellow detour signs that took me “the back way” and after 25kms or so landed me back on the highway on the Brisbane side of Nanango. Waves of relief could finally replace the waves of floodwaters that had dominated my day.

For the remainder of the 170km back to Brisbane I peered into countless overflowing creeks – but none of them spilled onto the road. I listened intently to ABC Local Radio and the fund of horror stories emerging from people across the state. Dalby and Chinchilla were on the verge of evacuation. It would be a while before I would be getting back to Roma. I didn’t care. I went home to bed and had long dreams about getting stuck in floods. Whenever I woke which was often, I reminded myself I was dry and safe. I drifted off the sleep again waiting for the waters to rise again in my mind.

UPDATE: The advertising slogan “If it’s flooded, forget it” came into being not long after these events. It was a lesson I learned fully that day.

Pakistan enduring worst ever floods

The still rising floods that struck Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces and now threatening Sindh are becoming the worst in Pakistan’s history. The official death toll is around 1,600 people but with the Pakistani government estimating over 13 million people affected, the true death toll is much higher. The floods have laid waste a 1,000kms swathe of Pakistani territory along the Indus River. After two weeks heavy rain is still falling adding to the floodwaters, hindering relief efforts and grounding helicopters needed to deliver food to victims. Even boat rescues are proving difficult in the deep waters.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said they were particularly concerned about 600,000 people, who remain cut off in the north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They also said the floods have reached the southern province of Sindh flooding hundreds of villages. Rain is forecast there for the next three days. OCHA said they expected the cost of the relief effort over the coming months will be several hundred million dollars.

The floods began last month after record monsoon rains, the highest in 80 years. The Upper Indus Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkwha began to fill out inundating the flood plain downstream. In some areas the water had reached as high as 5.5 metres. By 1 August, the Dawn newspaper was reporting at least 800 dead, as well as 45 bridges and 3,700 houses swept away in the floods. The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan and China, was closed after a bridge was destroyed. The Afghan border city of Peshawar was also cut off with road and rail links under water.

As rescue teams attempt to get to worst affected areas by boat, they soon realised things were even worse than they feared. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti said thousands of people in the inaccessible valleys of Malakand were in danger and rescue teams were facing problems in reaching there. “We are facing the worst-ever natural disaster in our history that has pushed the province almost 50 years back,” he said. “The destruction caused by heavy rains and flash floods, particularly in Malakand, is beyond our imagination.”

The floods affected the delivery of aid and the International Committee for the Red Cross said floodwaters also destroyed much of the health infrastructure in the worst affected areas, leaving inhabitants vulnerable to water-borne disease. Bernadette Gleeson, an ICRC health delegate in Islamabad, said they were restoring water systems and distributing such items as soap and wash basins. “We hope to ward off many of the health problems that could arise if large numbers of people had to use contaminated water supplies,” she said.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is fending off criticism he should return from an extended foreign trip. Zardari said the cabinet was responsible for directing relief efforts, and he was getting regular updates. It’s the prime minister’s responsibility, and he’s fulfilling his responsibility,” he said. Zardari said he had promises of assistance from the countries he had visited – the UAE, France and the UK. But these promises did not cool anger back home. “Our president prefers to go abroad rather than supervising the whole relief operation in such a crisis,” said a resident of the flood-threatened Sindh city of Sukkur. “They don’t care about us. They have their own agendas and interests.”

Of most interest to the city is the Sukkur Barrage across the Indus built during the Raj to feed one of the world’s largest irrigation systems. Water has already exceeded the danger level at the barrage. By this morning, the water flow coming down the Barrage was recorded at up to 1.4m cusecs (cubic feet per second). It is only designed to withstand 900,000 cusecs. Operators have opened Barrage doors, but the water pressure remains heavy. With incessant monsoonal rain and a lot of water still to come down the valley, matters will get worse before there is any improvement.

Roma’s record flood: Day 2

At 5.45am on Wednesday morning I was jolted into life by my alarm. 15 minutes later I was on the road and driving to the council building. The rain had stopped. I did a quick detour to the Arthur St bridge which was flooded yesterday. There was still water on the road but it looked passable. I went into the council’s 6am emergency response meeting at the invite of the mayor. The price of entry was that it would be off the record but there were many things said there they wanted me to get out to a wider audience. (See Day 1 story here)

Roma had been declared an official state emergency site yesterday. The Bungil peaked at 8.1m at 1.30pm yesterday but had dropped a couple of metres overnight. They said a quarter of the town had been flooded and at least 200 properties had water damage inside the home. There were no fatalities or serious injuries though there was one report of snakebite. 34 evacuees came through the RSL. There was also talk of the Premier Anna Bligh visiting town later today on her way back to Brisbane from Charleville which was in even deeper strife. It was not certain when or if she would come given the airport had been closed for almost 24 hours. I said I would chase up more info via her media liaison unit. The school principal also asked me to contact the ABC. ABC Local news was telling the world one of the three state school campuses was shut. It wasn’t and the principal asked me could I help get the right message out. After an hour reports from all the emergency services and a mixed weather forecast everyone left knowing the worst was over for now but it wouldn’t take much to rise again.

I went back to the office to catch up on emails and the Internet and take stock. Yesterday I was unable to get to the worst-affected areas – including where I lived as recently as ten days ago. First I went back to the RSL where the McGilvrays had moved home but the oldfellas from St Vinnies were back. I brought a few copies of the paper for them to read and then set about finding more stuff to write about. I was able to drive over the Arthur St bridge in my two-wheel drive with care. The water was still over the road but low enough to get through.

I parked up the road and trudged barefoot through the waters I couldn’t get through yesterday. This area was copping it for the second time in a month. The waters were still waist-high having dropped a metre or two overnight. My RSL friend Jill said I could check out her house so I went inside to take photos. The water had mostly dried out inside the home but had left a smelly mess. I walked around the corner to Charles St and found the house where I used to live.
There was no one there but the water was still all around the back yard and there was a sandbag at the door. Across the road a man named Paul lived in a high-set house on stilts. Paul was there on the balcony and I shouted up to him.“I assume you were dry enough up there?” I said.
“Yes, the water got as far as the fifth step,” pointing about half way down the stilts.
I asked him about the house across the road where I used to live.
“Yeah the water came right up. Think it got into the house,” he said.
I shuddered with my luck in recently leaving – my new place was in an unaffected part of town.
I then tried to walk on but the waters were rushing towards the creek here so it was too dangerous and too deep to continue. I went back the way I came and bumped into Johnny Mac.

Johnny is a Roma institution and has DJed here for 30 years. Johnny lives on a shed at the back of his brother’s house and the waters got into his place. Worse still they got into the bigger shed where he keeps all his audio gear and destroyed $16,000 worth of amps and other equipment.
“Luckily most of the old records were up high and survived,” Johnny said.
“It’s a musical history of Roma.”
Johnny said he spent the night at his parents who live at the back of the property on a slight hill. But with the creek running behind them it was touch-and-go whether they would be spared. He also showed me the swimming pool which was a mess of brown water and collapsed shade.

Johnny’s brother Phil Macfarlane then came downstairs and showed me underneath the house. They were getting ready for a garage sale and had all their gear ready for it. But a drum had gotten loose in the water and smashed into all the other contents sending everything flying.
Phil showed me the mark they had drawn for the height of the 1997 flood and this one was at least a metre higher. He and his family were safe enough upstairs in their stilted house but the power was off all night and they like everyone else hoped it would get no higher.
Johnny meanwhile looked disconsolate at all his damage.
“This is it for me,” he said.
“I’ve lived through six or seven floods in my time in Roma and I’ve had enough. It’s time to move.”
It was time for me to move on too. Much of the morning had gone and I needed to get back and start writing up my stories for Friday’s paper. I slowly waded my way back to the dry area. On the drive back the water was receding further on the bridge. In the office I heard Anna Bligh wasn’t coming today. Her pilot had deemed the airport too unsafe to land though it had re-opened this morning. I went along to second recovery coordination meeting of the day at 2pm. This time the council chamber was packed solid. As well as all the emergency services, there were reps from Telstra, Ergon, the insurers, health services and both the state and federal member of parliament.

(Image courtesy: Maranoa Regional Council)
The Council CEO officially declared it Roma’s worst flood since records began in 1917 though there was anecdotal evidence of a bigger one in the 1890s.
The sheer size of the meeting meant it was unwieldy and took longer than it should. They decided to go back to the core group for tomorrow’s meeting, which didn’t bother me as I was on deadline tomorrow anyway.
I went back to spend a long afternoon collating information and writing up the stories for what we hoped would be a memorable edition of the paper.
At the end of the day, I called in on the RSL again. They had a couple of the St Vinnies oldies staying the night and another couple that had to be helicoptered to safety from their property near Morven about 190km further west. Roy and Jill would stay the night with them again.

Roma’s record flood – March 2010

The warning signs were there from Monday. A great big monsoonal low was descending from the Northern Territory and was predicted to dump a great wad of rain on south and central Queensland. It started raining in Roma around 8pm that night and came down hard. The rain was loud all night making sleep difficult and fitful. I was up to report on a 6.45am sports breakfast meeting at the council building about five minutes drive from where I lived. I thought it might have been cancelled but wasn’t sure. The waters had risen substantially overnight.

I carefully threaded my way through the river-like roads and found Roma’s CBD awash with water. Not from the creeks but because the drainage system couldn’t cope. 133 mils had fallen overnight and it was still coming down. I got out of the car to take a few photos of slow-moving traffic through waves of water. The water was up to the step of our office and rising. In two minutes I was soaked to the skin. I retreated back to the car and onto the council building.

To my surprise, the sports breakfast went ahead. Many people were stuck on their properties and others were running late but many administrators turned up to hear how council was going to change its management of local sport. I sat saturated and took notes all the while realising the real story was elsewhere. When it finished, it had stopped raining. The waters retreated from the office step leaving a muddy mess on the pavement. The word was the Bungil Creek was still rising and we were heading for a big flood. Having recalled what the floods were like last month, I rushed home to get a pair of shorts and sandals and was ready for combat duties.

It was obvious this flood was going to be much larger than the last one. In February there was one bridge to the northern part of town that didn’t flood over, but this was inundated by the time I got there. I saw a boat about to ferry a lady with her groceries across and hitched a lift into the flood zone. I thought the two boaties were SES officers but they were Santos workers heading to find their friend stranded in a ditch. The other passenger told me her name was Inge Strybos and she lived further up the street. Neither her name nor her accent was local. She was Belgian but had a Roma boyfriend. Inge had never seen rain or floods like this in Brussels.

The boys dropped Inge and myself off in shallow waters on the other side of the creek and set off to find their mate. I started walking north asking whoever would talk to me about how the flood was treating them. None of the houses I saw were inundated though the gardens were looking soggy. I was taking a photo of a woman walking her three dogs to safety when she shouted out “hello Derek”. It was local MP Howard Hobbs’ adviser Ann Leahy and she was taking her dogs to the safety of her office on the other side of town before returning to her flooded home. I left Ann to find her way to town and walked further down her street.

The waters were waist high and I cursed I had no pocket in my t-shirt to carry my mobile phone. At the end of the street the waters were getting almost chest high and the current was stronger. Several low-lying houses were inundated though their occupants had long gone. Concerned about losing my mobile and camera, I retreated back the way I came. Back on the corner, Ann was finding it difficult to get a lift back to town with the dogs. Then came Darren Christiansen to the rescue.

Darren had a big truck and was taking sandbags around to houses in need. He got Ann and the dogs to hop on. Then he spotted me.
“Are you from the press?” he said.
“Yep. I’m from the Western Star,” I replied.
“Do you want to hop in? I’m delivering the last few sandbags before heading back into town,” he said.
I hopped in the front cab which was already crowded. Darren introduced me to Kate who was pregnant and her toddler Zoe and their small dog. Darren was taking them to higher ground.
Darren told me he was a young and single grazier.
“I don’t know if you saw me – I was on A Farmer Needs A Wife but I was eliminated in the first round”.
I hadn’t seen the program. Darren said he’d never seen floods like this (Neither had I) even though he was well used to rain on his property 70km west of Roma.
“It’s been raining solid there for four weeks,” he said.
“The only way around is by quad bike or horse.
“I was in town today and thought people could use a hand.
“The truck has got a high input so it’s safe enough to get round in.”

We continued to tour around the flood areas from the safety of his high cab and I helped Darren deliver the last few sandbags at his mother’s house. Finally he headed back to town and dropped Ann, Kate, Zoe and the dogs off. He told me he was going to the council depot to get more sandbags and I went along with him.

The depot was full of exhausted council workers many on the job since 3am laying sandbags. They were enjoyed a rest, a feed and a smoko. They were swapping war stories of the morning’s events. Everyone was agreed it was the biggest flood that had ever hit Roma.

Darren borrowed a forklift and loaded his truck with more sandbags. He picked up his mate Mark who had yet to see the flood areas and we drove back past the flooded creek. The Bungil had peaked at 8.1m around lunchtime but the waters were still rising around town. By now most houses were beyond sandbagging but we kept driving around the streets seeing if anyone needed help.

One man named Aaron Murphy showed us inside his saturated house. “I was out in the garage madly trying to lift everything off the ground.”
“While I was out there, the waters came in through the door.
“It happened so quick there was no time to react.”
The waters contaminated every room, destroying the carpets, sofas and fridge and everything at near ground level. With nothing better to do Aaron joined us on the truck as we continued our tour of the saturated suburbs.

Occasionally someone would call out for sandbags for their property on higher ground but most had already left their homes to Mother Nature. The rain stayed away all day so the waters stopped rising, but there was ominous talk of waters up north yet to come down this way. With all the rivers in southern Queensland flooded there was nowhere for that water to go except up.

After touring around for a couple of hours it was time to head back to town. Darren picked up a few more stragglers and we all crowded around the back of the truck in illegal fashion. Police turned a blind eye on the creek crossing but further down the road they took a dim view of Darren’s unsecured load and we all had to hastily get off. It was a short walk to the office where I caught up with the news from elsewhere. I heard the RSL hall had been transformed to an emergency response centre and trudged up to take a look.

I was friendly with the RSL crew and knew most of them there. They were great people who tirelessly devoted themselves to the community. One couple, Roy and Jillie, had their own home flooded out but still spent all day helping others, feeding the evacuees and plying them with tea and coffee. The RSL processed over 30 evacuees during the day while they tried to find beds for the night for them. Many people volunteered to house the evacuees. All that was left when I arrived were three old fellas from an old folk’s home near the creek that was flooded out. I talked to Henry Steers, who was 77 and had to be rescued with his 16-year-old dog Boss. Henry and two mates were glad to be rescued by the SES though some of the other residents had to be cajoled by police into leaving their homes.
“I live next to the Creek and the waters just came swimming through my door,” Henry said.
His friend Bobby McKenzie was envious at way Henry was rescued.
“He got piggybacked out while we had to walk!” he said.
But Henry had a good excuse.
“I’ve only got one leg, see,” he said, tapping at his wooden leg.
“When the boat took us to the other side of the creek, this lovely lady picked us up and dropped us off at the church where someone gave us dry clothes,” he said.
“Then we were taken over here where they looked after us.”
“It’s beautiful here, I got a hot meal of potato and sausages” he said.
Then Henry looked wistfully at Boss as he remembered what he had left behind.
“I bought a big Y-bone and a fillet today for us that’s all gone,” he said.
“And I don’t know how much clothes I’ve lost.”
Henry has lived in Roma all his life but never saw anything like he saw today.
“I’ve never seen it this high,” he said.
“It frightens you really.”
The RSL found beds for the night for most of the old men thanks to the generous offers of many townspeople. It was harder to place Henry and his dog but his daughter who was stuck in the floods finally arrived to take them both away to a warm bed.

Just as it seemed the RSL’s work was done for the night, another couple arrived around 8.30pm dripping wet from head to toe. Tanya and Andrew McGilvray live on a hill behind the Saleyards and thought they were safe. But as the waters steadily rose all day, their worries increased. The neighbours below started to move out, water was lapping below the floorboards and baby snakes started appearing around the house. As darkness approached the McGilvrays knew it was time to leave.
“What probably convinced me to go was when I looked out the window and saw a 44 gallon drum float past” said Andew.
Andrew first had to walk his two horses to higher ground.
“The water came up to here,” Andrew said, pointing to his nose.
Andrew made it through safely but back at the house there was another problem.
“We rang the SES but they said we would have to swim out to the road to get to the boat,” he said.
“My wife is pregnant so we didn’t fancy that idea.
“Just when it looked as if we would have to do it, the neighbour rolls by in a tractor and got us down to the boat.”
The SES crew winched the two last families to safety with the bridge over the highway completely submerged in the gathering gloom.
They stayed overnight at the RSL and Roy and Jillie stayed with them. Just before I left to go home around 9pm, the Mayor arrived and invited me to the 6am disaster response meeting the following morning. I said yes and drove home exhausted. Though it was raining heavily again, I slept the sleep of the dead, knowing another big day lay ahead with the possible promise of more floods to come.