SEQ & NE NSW: Rain event & Flood tragedy - Jan 2011

[Australis(Shell3155)]

See this face book page.

Shoe Boxes of Love' drive for flood victims

http://www.facebook.com/TheVideoMan#!/s ... flovedrive" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

maybe by the time they get put together they may be needed to be handed out in VIC

[mick]

We had a BBQ at work and raised 5 grand in an hour and a half, the company matched that amount. I think we will be sending volunteers up thre once things have settled down, to help with recovery. I know that thousands of business would have done the same thing, its all we can do.

Extended live chopper cam on 9 atm is very good. Watching live wine bottle cleaning atm with human chain restacking the fridges!

[Petros]

I take my hat off to Ken who accurately reported the calamitous rainfall possibilities as they became available well before the event without putting any dramatic spin on the outcomes. Just told us what the models are predicting and leaving us to our own conclusions. Well done.

Also notable was Ken's silence as the events unfolded. A lot of us weaken and post "I told you so predictions" etc. that do not enhance respect (one of my many failings).

[retiredweatherman]

My son got back home ( Townsville ) by bus after being stranded in Brisbane for 3 weeks..

[Australis(Shell3155)]

Great news, I bet that is a relief to have him home.

[Lily]

Great to hear he's home Bet he has some stories to tell, what was the trip back like?

[Australis(Shell3155)]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/flo ... ooftop-cow" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cow on a Roof... OMJ.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/flo ... -tyre-ride" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cunning fox.

[retiredweatherman]

My son's trip back quicker than usual as bus bypassed Bundaberg/Agnes Waters/Gladstone due some flooding and road conditions. Thought he would be tired after all that but no, an hour after he got back it was off to a local cricket match. O to be young again... Those 2 TC's off the coast and resultant drier southerly airstream has given us a chance to dry out a bit.

[Lily]

There are now aerial images of the devastation. You can key in the street/suburb you want to see and it shows you.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/feat ... tofloodmap

[Lily]

From the Australian, an in depth description of the events in Queensland last week http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-dept ... 5988066591

An inland tsunami - like a fury from hell
Graham Lloyd, Environment editor From: The Australian January 15, 2011 12:00AM

An army of volunteers took to the streets of Brisbane yesterday, armed with buckets and mops, to tackle the biggest clean-up the city has seen. Picture: AFP Source: The Australian

BY the time the main streets of Toowoomba were transformed into a deadly torrent of brown water soon after midday on Monday, it had been hammering down for hours.

The Garden City, perched 700m above sea level on the Great Dividing Range, about 125km west of Brisbane, had experienced a wet couple of months, with more than 300m of rain in December and another 250mm falling since a dry New Year's Day.

But then what part of Queensland hadn't, with much of the central and southern parts of the state dealing with their worst floods in a generation or more?

This rain, though, was heavier than normal, heavy enough for the weather bureau to warn, just after 11am, of "localised flash flooding". It would prove a terrible understatement. Just after noon, the two creeks running through the centre of Toowoomba - more drains than permanent water courses, say locals - burst their banks, creating a surging city whirlpool that carried off people overwhelmed by waters strong enough to send cars smashing into bridges, tear facades off buildings and knock down brick walls.

Contrary to popular assumption, the downpour in Toowoomba did not flow east down the fertile Lockyer Valley to deliver Brisbane and its satellite city of Ipswich their worst flooding since the 1974 disaster etched deep in Queenslanders' memory.

The water headed west of the Great Dividing Range to recharge the floods that had already swamped the rural Darling Downs townships of Chinchilla and Goondiwindi - just two of dozens of towns and cities from Rockhampton on the central coast south to the NSW border to have weathered weeks of inundation.

At the same time, a rainstorm of equal ferocity on the eastern slopes of the range was falling on to already saturated ground. Water from every gully joined up and multiplied in power as it raced down the escarpment. Quarries filled and burst, sodden hillsides slumped in landslide, rivers formed on railway lines and cascaded down roadways until a wall of death witnesses say was up to 8m high was unleashed upon a string of settlements without warning.

It's estimated that up to 7.5 billion tonnes of water - 15 Sydney Harbours, if that can be imagined - crashed on to southeast Queensland during this week's superstorm. How that water, sucked from the ocean perhaps a week ago, found its way back to the sea - killing up to 30 people and destroying countless lives along the way - is the story of this week's disaster. It will also be the subject of a royal commission almost certain to be called as the state begins the process of rebuilding.

The Lockyer Valley

HIGH in the Lockyer Valley catchment, down the escarpment from Toowoomba, the small centre of Ballard escaped the onslaught that exploded through Spring Bluff, a little further down the valley, like a fury from hell. By 1pm the water raced to Murphys Creek and from there it was unstoppable. It didn't follow river and creek beds, already flowing swiftly after weeks of rain.

It simply overwhelmed water courses, sweeping over paddocks and leaving an indiscriminate swath of destruction.

The waters swamped Withcott, raced through Helidon about 12km down the valley, and dumped a mountain of debris on Grantham, another 9km further on, before spreading over the agricultural plains around Gatton. It would eventually flow on to swamp Ipswich and then join overflow from Wivenhoe Dam into the Brisbane River and ultimately the flood plains of Australia's third-biggest city.

At 12.30pm, 30 minutes after the downpour high on the ridge above, the Matthews family was sheltering from the rain on McCormack Drive, Spring Bluff, unaware of the torrent that was about to blow apart their small cottage with its big, covered veranda, outdoor gym and above-ground swimming pool overlooking a stream that had never been more than a trickling brook.

A wall of water blew away the front and back walls of the cottage, sweeping childhood sweethearts Steven and Sandra Matthews into the torrent and their deaths. The water did not come down the creek line. It surged down a roadway from above. The Matthews's children, Sam, 20, and Victoria, 15, survived by sheltering in the roof cavity. Matthew's apprenticeship with his father saved his life. "We are electricians," Sam says. "Dad and I spent half our lives in roof cavities. I went for higher ground."

He says there had been no bucketing of rain. "If we had time, we would have gone to higher ground but we were trapped before we knew it," he says.

"Our front yard was a river. I am surprised we are still alive."

"There was so much water," Victoria adds. " I couldn't even tell what direction it was coming from."

From Spring Bluff, water rushed east, sweeping all before it and crashing through Murphys Creek, a settlement of 500 people, at about 2pm. The surge of water exploded down the hill, undercutting the roadway and sweeping the landscape. A wash-out near the railway tunnel high on a hill is testament to the fury that descended on the houses below. "One house looks like a claw had gone into the side of it and ripped it out," says Murphys Creek resident Monica Hoddinott. "Another neighbour's house had 1m of water though it, which punched out through the side."

Hoddinott was at home with her daughter Sophie watching in disbelief as the creek filled and raced towards them. She said the pair had only 10 minutes to collect their thoughts and belongings and flee to higher ground. When the water had passed, Hoddinott says, their house had escaped by centimetres. From the air, the path of destruction at Murphys Creek appears indiscriminate. In truth, the surge of water had been so strong it could not be contained within the established river course. As a result, some homes near the river had been left unscathed while others were blown apart.

From Murphys Creek, floodwaters flowed to Postmans Ridge. "The water came 5m deep; it slammed my place and shook my place, and about five minutes later the rest of the water came down the creek and swamped us," says Postmans Ridge resident Rod Alford.

He watched a wall of water higher than the roof smash into the home of his neighbour, Sylvia Baillie, washing her away and removing everything but the concrete slab on which the house had been built. "It hit it so hard the house exploded," he says. "They found her car 750m away. It had been parked on her front lawn. We saw her go. We know she is dead but they have got to find the body to confirm it."

Alford says the amount of damage to the town is extraordinary, houses demolished, others unlivable. "This was a babbling brook surrounded with trees and look at it. I had magical gardens down there, horse stables and yards. It's all gone."

Nearby Withcott was a disaster zone, Lockyer Valley Mayor Steve Jones said in one of the first reports from the frontline.

"Withcott looks like Cyclone Tracy has gone through it," he told The Chronicle in Toowoomba. "If you dropped an atom bomb on it, you couldn't tell the difference."

From Withcott, the floodwaters built speed through the deep rocky riverbank channel at Helidon before crossing the Warrego Highway - the main link between Toowoomba and Brisbane - and slamming into the Grantham rail bridge.

Local welder Kel Wood, who was at the nearby Grantham Hotel with four friends on Monday afternoon, reckons the wide brown wave of water that hit the town was 3m deep and travelling at 60km/h. "We watched a low-set brick house beside the pub absolutely implode with three people inside . . . There is no way in the world any of them survived."

Wood says Armageddon is the closest he can come to describing it. "I've never seen anything like it," he told the ABC, "and I never want to see anything like it again. We thought we were going to die."

He stood on the roof surrounded by carnage. "(We) watched the cars float down the road, watched the houses float down the road, watched just massive amounts of debris going down the road. Well, road, farm . . . it was just a lake."

From his roof, Martin Warburton saw what he thought were people struggling in the water. "I thought they were people swimming," he told News Limited newspapers. "Then I realised they were dead. You saw hands, legs, hair being thrashed about. By the time I got close to the water, I realised they weren't swimming, they were gone."

The bridge became symbolic of the regional destruction.

The tangled mass of cars, trees, wheelie bins, furniture, dead animals and household belongings was sieved from the surging waters at the Grantham railway and was the site selected by police to establish their command post.

The Coroner set up an office in expectation that the bodies of those washed away upstream would be found tangled in the flotsam and jetsam at Grantham. On Thursday, police said the Grantham bridge was not the mass grave some had feared.

It was a small mercy; at least three of the townsfolk are dead, and grave fears are held for at least seven.

Yesterday, lines of army personnel fanned out over the plains of the Lockyer Valley in a grim hunt for bodies in the mudflats. One body has been found 80km from where the person went missing, signalling the challenge facing the searchers. Sixteen people have been confirmed killed, 13 from the Lockyer Valley and Toowoomba, with 53 still listed as missing. Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson yesterday voiced the fears of many valley residents still looking for the missing and dead when he said "we could not exclude the possibility that someone may never be found".

Central command

As the floodwaters from the extreme rain event high on the Great Dividing Range bore down on Ipswich, relentless heavy rains further north had pushed the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams to capacity. The cumulative effect of floodwaters bearing down on the Brisbane River from the Lockyer Valley and from an overwhelmed Wivenhoe Dam - supposed to be Brisbane's insurance policy from future flooding - was sparking near-panic at disaster headquarters where Bligh was holding two-hourly briefings.

A pale Bligh told reporters on Monday the event that started in Toowoomba could only be described as "a complete freak of nature".

"Effectively, what we've seen is a wall of water, in some places up to 8m at a time, coming down that valley."

Atkinson, picking up the reports of survivors, said it had been an "instant inland tsunami".

By Tuesday morning, Bligh was convinced: "Ipswich and Brisbane are now facing their greatest threat and their toughest test in more than 35 years."

Both cities were under threat and, with rain continuing to fall, floodwaters were expected to exceed the 5.45m level of the 1974 floods.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said Wivenhoe Dam's ability to release water gradually to prevent flooding had been swamped. "The dam is full. Every bit of rain that falls on the catchment can get to Brisbane, and there is not much more we can do about that. They now have to discharge that water because more is on the way. Unfortunately, the big shock absorber that is that dam is now full."

Wivenhoe had hit 191 per cent capacity by using overflow storages. The Somerset Dam behind it was full as well. Water was being disgorged into the Brisbane River through five spill gates, each cascade producing a rooster-tail plume of water. By Tuesday, Wivenhoe was spilling water into the river at a rate of 645,000 megalitres a day, everyone knowing it would have to be cut back in coming days as water flowed into the river, below the dam wall, from the Lockyer River and Bremer River, which cuts through Ipswich.

It is believed the Wivenhoe Dam came within 90cm of blowing "a fuse plug", which would have crumbled an emergency spill wall and released a wave of water with devastating consequences for Brisbane.

As the pressure built, Bligh stepped up the communications assault, demonstrating that the lessons of Christine Nixon's handling of the devastating Victorian bushfires in February 2009 had been learned. An unpopular premier, Bligh would become ubiquitous during the emergency, delivering a message of concern and stoicism.

Her handling of the floods has finally unshackled her from the shadow of her former boss Peter Beattie and may well become the defining issue of her premiership.

While the capital prepared for Armageddon - initial forecasts suggested the Bremer would peak at 22m and the Brisbane River at 5.5m - the rain continued to pour. Gatton, in the heart of the valley that absorbed evacuees from other valley towns including Grantham and Laidley, was drenched with 79mm, grounding rescue helicopters and aircraft trying to reach isolated towns. The rain finally eased on Wednesday, allowing the rescuers in and the clean-up to begin.

Hoddinott, returning to her home in Murphys Creek, has been told it could take up to six weeks to get the power back on. And that she is lucky to have a house that survived the torrent. "Even if houses are not damaged, it is what's outside that we all rely on," she says. "Septic systems and bore pumps have all been broken. The water supply is contaminated and we can't clean it out because there is no electricity and it is near impossible to get a generator."

Further downstream, the break in the downpour also saved Brisbane and Ipswich from a flood of near-biblical proportions - though the city and its satellite still face a grave threat.

Brisbane and Ipswich

THE low-lying city of Ipswich, 40km west of Brisbane, bore the first brunt of floodwaters coming down the Bremer River. On Wednesday, floodwaters divided the city of 140,000, plunging about a third of it underwater and inundating 3000 houses. Early estimates of damage were quickly revised down as floodwaters peaked at 19.5m, well below the predicted 22m, but that is little consolation to residents returning to destroyed homes. Unlike Ipswich, the river level in Brisbane, closer to the sea, is also affected by the tide. The river can rise and fall 2m on the normal tide. This week, it was forecast to smash the 1974 record of 5.45m.

The floodwaters started to rise in Brisbane on Tuesday and by midday CBD businesses had told their workers to go home while they could still get through and prepare for the worst.

On Wednesday, low-lying icons such as Suncorp Stadium, the Breakfast Creek Hotel to the east of the city, the Regatta Hotel to the west, the University of Queensland and New Farm Park were under water.

Despite Bligh's appeals for calm, worry spread through Australia's third-biggest metropolis. Residents rushed supermarkets and petrol stations. Those in low-lying areas shifted what they could to top floors or higher ground, grabbed what they could and left their homes to the mercy of the floodwaters. By the time they had peaked at 4.46m in the early hours of Thursday - mercifully short of the predicted levels - 33,701 homes and businesses had been inundated and 70,000 homes were left without electricity.

The worst-affected areas included multi-million-dollar properties along the riverfront. Houses at West End were under water to their rooftops. The worst-affected suburbs were Yeronga, Fairfield, Oxley and Rocklea to the south. West Lake, Fig Tree Pocket, Rosalie, Taringa and Jindalee to the west and East Brisbane, Fortitude Valley and New Farm around the CBD.

Millions of dollars of public infrastructure, including the $17m New Farm river walkway - a symbol of Brisbane's emergence as a sophisticated cultural city - was washed away. The clean-up bill is estimated in the billions of dollars.

Like much of the rest of the state - and unlike the residents of the Lockyer Valley - Brisbane at least had plenty of warning to prepare. Hard as it may seem for the thousands of families hosing out their houses and picking through the debris to put their lives back together, Brisbane was saved from a greater disaster because the rain stopped just in time.

Unlike the 1974 floods, the Brisbane River peaked under clear skies, meaning local creeks were not swollen to further clog the system and amplify the damage.

And rainfall into the Wivenhoe catchment eased just in time to avoid what disaster planners feared could have been an even more catastrophic flood.

The future

THE heart of this week's flood disaster is not to be found in the riverfront suburbs and lowlands of Brisbane. To understand the horrific events, it is necessary to understand La Nina, the weather system produced by cold surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that have ended a decade-long drought and plunged the eastern half of Australia into weather chaos.

This is the normal signature of La Nina, which this year has been at its strongest since 1917 - and still has months to run.

As the floodwaters recede, there are lingering questions about whether the worst has in fact passed.

David Jones, the manager of climate monitoring and prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology, says perhaps not. He says eastern Australia remains in the middle of a very strong La Nina system that will continue until at least the autumn. And, while La Nina events usually last for 12 months, they can last a lot longer. "A strong La Nina can last for a number of years as happened in 1998, 1999 and 2000."

That's not great news for the 86 Queensland communities that have been affected by flooding since late last month - some of which have been swallowed by floodwaters three times. Some towns - and Brisbane suburbs - remain cut off. In the Lockyer Valley, the search for victims and the rebuilding of communities will continue for weeks, and years.

After an extremely emotional week, Bligh has a simple request:

"I hope and pray that mother nature is leaving us alone to get on with the job of cleaning up and recovering from this event."

[Meso]

This really brings home what people caught up in the thick of it must have gone through - http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/specia ... 5988733016" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Ken]

Petros, thanks for the kind words in your earlier posts. I only wish the circumstances weren't so bad.

[Ken]

The question has to asked why this was allowed given the river has a history of flooding the fact that Qld is a tropical climate??????

BTW not all of QLD has a true tropical climate. SE QLD including Brisbane is technically classified as warm temperate/subtropical by most classification systems with midlatitude influences such as fronts contributing to some winter rainfall, occasional cold outbreaks, the odd snowfall on the higher mountain peaks, etc. There's a distinct rainfall peak in late summer but we don't have "true" Wet and Dry seasons like the northern tropics where they regularly get massive falls during the Wet and hardly anything during the Dry.

We do however get extreme rainfall events from time to time (772mm in 24hrs at the back of the Sunshine Coast during an east coast low in late winter 2007) and the situation isn't helped by the fact that the region basically lies on coastal "flood plains".

[Lily]

Sen. Bob Brown under fire today for his assertion that the coal industry should be forced to pay for the cost of the floods due to emissions adding to global warming resulting in the recent floods in Queensland http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-dept ... 5989034396

I wonder how he can explain the floods of 1841 that saw a flood height of 8.4 metres or 1893 with 8.3 metres?

[Meso]

Drawing a long bow there

[apocalypse]

Here is a very comprehensive gallery of aerial images of the floods in and around the Brisbane area, and further west up towards the Toowoomba and Oakey regions. Apparently there are over 9000 images, so it will take some time to go through them all.

http://www.abovephotography.com.au/maps ... ne/map.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[AUSSKY]

...and this is a graphic example of why you shouldn't drive through floodwaters.......it's not what you can see...it's what you can't see.... (images copyright Barb Mullen)

[Ken]

Just thought I'd give an insight into what it was like being in one of the NON-affected areas of Brisbane.

The thing that most stands out is the stark difference between the affected and non-affected areas. In Brisbane, the affected areas are mainly near the River with the big exception being the inundation extending south from the River through suburbs like Yeronga, Rocklea, etc. There's much devastation in these areas as shown by the media. In complete contrast, a sizeable remainder of Brisbane appears to have come through largely unscathed in comparison. For example, it's like nothing ever happened in my area around Mt Gravatt on Brisbane's southside - just a few rainy days. The only clues that a flood event actually occurred have been the conspicuous absence of bread, milk and bottled water on supermarket shelves everywhere and of course, the media coverage. The "gradient" between the devastated and non-affected areas is also steep. Half of one street can be devastated while the other half looks untouched.

I was in the CBD on the morning of the flood peak of the Brisbane River and it was surreal. Even though it was a weekday, everything was silent except for media and military helicopters thundering overhead, fire alarms going off in empty buildings, wind rippling little waves across the floodwaters covering streets, and almost everyone was standing there silently taking photos with hardly a word being said. Saw someone's couch, a bed, wheelbarrow and strings of big whirlpools floating down the river. The speed of the water was amazing.
Prior to this, the inner city building which houses the Regional Forecasting Centre went into lockdown because no-one was completely sure of how much inundation there would be of basement areas, etc. The ironic thing was, the contingency plans called for the Flood Warning Centre itself and the regional forecast centre to be relocated to another building on higher ground if worst came to worst. A number of staff couldn't return home. There was also the option of the NT or NSW taking over duties. As it turned out, this didn't eventuate.

Watching footage of my own hometown, restaurants and places I visit regularly, in the world's news headlines felt weird to say the least.

Ken.

[daviescr]

Just came across this on the BBC, interesting new satellite images from a new soil moisture detection system. Shows how heavily laden the ground was before the floods:



More here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12206639

[Ken]

Currently looking at a fair bit of instability here in SE QLD over the next couple of days with some solid thunderstorms. There's also the increased risk of tropical cyclogenesis up north later this week or next. Hopefully the falls won't be anything like last week's.