A Pictorial Post

I mentioned that we took a break last Sunday. We went for a walk along the road next to the river (the riverside walkway immediately next to the river was still closed) and through one of our favourite areas, Rosalie, which has quaint, traditional wooden "Queenslander" houses many and lovely, small restaurants and shops in a little village centre. Rosalie is about 1km from the river but is low lying so the water came flooding in there. Low-lying areas like this were flooded even if the water didn't find a path on the surface, as it also came bubbling up from storm-water drains when the river reached a level higher than the drains.

Here are some of the photos I took along the way. Click on any photo to view it in a bigger size. All the photos in used in this blog and more of the floods are in an online album here, where you can see on a map where each photo was taken or view a slideshow of the whole lot..

The remains of the Regatta ferry terminal. The poles sticking up on the left are where the boarding platform used to be, with a jetty linking it to the waiting area on the right. All the other ferry terminals are in a similar state so it will be months (years?) before they are all operating again

A piece of a jetty from one of the ferry terminals

The badly damaged Drift Restaurant after being raised from the riverbed. This had to be intentionally sunk during the flood when it looked like it might break free from its moorings and damage bridges downstream.

The appreciation shown by the owners of shops at Rosalie. Note the high-water mark on the blackboard on the bottom photo.

Still Homeless

We took the day off on Sunday. It felt like we were on holiday!

On Monday I did some more cleanup at our apartment building. Getting the pool back in shape has been on the back-burner but I saw that it needed a quick fix to prevent it becoming a nursery for mosquitoes and other nasties. I picked up a big tub of chlorine from the pool shop and threw a bunch of that in. It definitely did something as within a few minutes several fish popped up to the surface gasping for air.

 

Before the flood

After

It's going to take a lot of work to clean it, as it's a vinyl-lined pool which means that it would be damaged if all the water was pumped out - The water that's in has to be cleaned.

The rest of the week I'm doing more IT work at Volunteering Queensland, but yesterday was Australia Day. We didn't do the traditional beach 'n barbie though - Christine went to work and I helped a flooded friend throw out flood-damaged cupboards at his house in the morning and spent the rest of the day packing boxes at our apartment so that we can move as soon as the building is liveable again. Speaking of that, the power might be restored tomorrow, and then it will just be a few more days to get the lift and fire services fixed up before we can move in. There's still mud in the garages so Sunday is a mud-working day again.

60,000 Volunteers Can't be Wrong

It's been a busy few days:

On Thursday I went to help out at Manny & Meg's Art Shed in West End. They carry a huge amount of stock normally, and when the floods came they only had time to rescue selected goods. They had to turf a huge pile of art supplies, and are trying to save another massive amount that was flood damaged which they will sell cheap or donate. I spent the morning cleaning tubes of paint, paintbrushes and other drawing materials together with other volunteers, including an ex-South African who had flown down from Cairns to help & a Bosnian sculptor who lives in Brisbane. Art supplies can cost a lot - I rescued a couple of thousand dollars worth in the time I was there.

 The inside of the Art Shed

One of the many bags of soiled stock

 Volunteers washing art supplies

Organising the stock that was saved from the floods

In the afternoon I went to help out at Volunteering Queensland - The organisation that puts volunteers together with the councils, emergency services, non-profits and charities that need them. Initially I was going to work on taking calls from volunteers or entering information into a database, but I quickly realised that most of the volunteers and permanent staff there are more "socially minded" than technology minded so I could help a lot more sorting out the data that had already been collected of 60,000+ volunteers. They realised that too and I quickly got given more tasks to do so went back on Friday (yesterday) and today. One of the things they were getting other volunteers to do is to copy registration information from emails from another 8,000 volunteers into their database one-by-one. I found a way to do it in one go it caused a bit of consternation today when they realised that I had just put ten volunteers out of work until they could find something else they needed them to do.

Our apartment repairs are going well but still needs work. Our lease ended today officially and we were supposed to move to the apartment downstairs, but everyone involved has agreed that it can wait until the building is habitable again. We have also convinced the owner to waive rent from when we had to evacuate and we will donate the rent money to the Flood Relief Fund instead - Actually on behalf of Charl & Joanna seeing as we're staying with them. Hopefully we will be able to move back to our apartment around the end of January.

It's been hard work the past couple of weeks. I'm going to take the day off tomorrow!

A change of pace - The tradies are coming

With most of the thick mud cleared and almost all the water-damaged goods and rubbish now removed from the pavements, the focus has been on getting the tradies lined up to quote and repair: Electricians, carpenters, carpet layers...

Wednesday 18/1/2011 after the floods - A much quieter and cleaner street

At our apartment building yesterday the electrician, lift technicians and plumbers (pumping out the lift shaft) were all busy.

I cleared the last of the rubbish and did some more cleaning, but most importantly cleaned the big gas barbie which, fortunately, had been chained to the wall. After all what's the point of having a roof over you head if you don't have a barbie out the back?

The foyer of our apartment building

 

Tomorrow I'm off to help Brisbane's favourite art-supply shop - The Art-Shed - recover from being flooded.
It's a great shop that carries a wide range of stock, but is located in the basement of a building, so once the water came in it didn't stand a chance. The entire place was left filled with a mush of paper, paints, canvasses and brushes. Have a look at the photos on their web site, and if you're in Brisbane please support them.

In the afternoon I'm going to help Volunteering Queensland - The organisation managing volunteers for the cleanup - with "databasing" the thousands of emails they've received with offers of help.

Signs of Progress

I decided to give the mud-wallowing a skip until I got my tetanus shot, which I'd booked for the afternoon. Instead I sorted out our apartment.

For about 2 weeks before the flood we had been finding a lot of ants in the apartment. I guess that with all the rain they just wanted somewhere dry, and found a nice cosy spot in the drywalls. We had been keeping them under control, but by the time I got back there today they were having a great party. Also we had cleared out the fridge of perishables but it was desperate for a good clean, and needed to clear out the cupboards of open packets of biscuits, pasta, etc.

Things were far quieter at the apartment building with the weekend workers having returned to their paid jobs, but the council workers, rural fire fighting service and volunteer bobcat drivers cleaning out the road and building entrance. With all that work the building is finally becoming recognisable.

Residents were busying themselves with sorting out their personal things: Washing recovered photos, carrying boxes out, etc.

We also heard today that the Energex - The electricity supply company - said that they have been able to clean the flooded substation rather than having to replace it as we expected. That makes a great difference. If available tradies can be found to sort out all the other things we might be able to move back into the apartments in 2 or 3 weeks. The other niceties (like new carpets on the floors) will probably take longer.

Some measure of normality is starting to return to other parts of Brisbane as well: Roads are opening up, trains are back on schedule and people are going back to work. The grass is starting to flourish too - All that free "fertilizer" seems to be doing wonders for it.


But there is still a lot of work to be done.
Now that I've had my tetanus injection it will probably be hard labour for me again tomorrow.

Answers to questions

In answer to some questions I've been asked:

Q: Once the volunteers have done what they can, there will be many properties needing structural repair or even reconstruction, in many cases beyond the financial capacity of the owners to pay. Since people have apparently not been able to get insurance against an event like this, presumably the government will provide funds to supplement ( if that's the right word for a ratio of 100 to 1) the donations. Has anything been said about this aspect?

A: You're right that there will be a HUGE amount of work for the "tradies" - electricians, plumbers, plasterers (or "plasterboard fitters"), fire-alarm people, etc. They will be booked up for months or years.
There are currently volunteers offering all kinds of help. For example I have volunteered to a group who are offering assistance to businesses and sole-proprietors to source donated computer equipment and help get their IT systems up and running again.

People are able to get flood insurance but many did not have because it is expensive and they never dreamed that the water would reach them. The "Great flood of 1974" wasn't supposed to happen again after the Wivenhoe Dam was built. There will probably also be some negotiation over the cover, as some policies cover for "storm damage" but not flooding, some cover for "creek flooding" but not "river flooding", etc.

Those that are not covered need to foot the cost themselves but I guess that those that are in dire need will get some kind of help from the government. The government and City Council are busy looking at many post-flood issues but I haven't seen any official announcement about that particular issue yet. One of the things I have read is that the council is looking at buying back properties in flood-affected areas. They already have a policy for this in place, eg where riverfront properties are bought back and turned into public footpaths or parks.

Q: In the meantime, people whose houses are not habitable will need to find longer term accommodation. Another difficult problem! Any idea how many this will apply to? 

A: I think the majority of people will have to stay with friends and family until they are able to move back into their own homes - even if the homes are not completely restored. While the electricity to our apartment building will hopefully be restored within a couple of weeks, there are buildings nearby who's electrical distribution rooms were flooded and I've been told that it is expected to take around 3 months to repair. That's about 40 families per building.

Q: It seems surprising the number of cars and other things that might have been saved were left. I notice  that at least one couple thought the upper level of your garages would be safe.  You were evidently more cautious or better informed. Were the estimates of flood levels not sufficiently accurate at the time people were warned to evacuate?

A: We were just lucky. Up until Monday all the attention had been on the already-flooded towns like Rockhampton and the terrible flash flood at Toowoomba. On Monday night, one of the managers from the body corporate told us that the river was expected to rise on the Wednesday and Thursday and so they were going to put sandbags at the entrance to the ground floor garages ("G1") the next day as a precaution. There had been a couple of king tides (spring tides) in the weeks before that had pushed the river up over walkways and onto some roads in other parts of the city. But it had come no where near the level of our building so I thought they were being very cautious.

On Tuesday morning I moved the car out to the street so that we could use it later in the day rather than it being trapped in by the sandbag wall, and JUST in case the water really did come up. I also moved the things in our garage up to our apartment - Luckily I was at home and able to do that. By late morning the water was rising surprisingly high up the riverbank and I spent the rest of the day helping neighbours move goods up from their garages to their apartments and to other garages and the pool room on the second level ("G2"). People had so much stuff in their garages that there wasn't time to get everything up. One of the residents was in the process of moving and had their entire tandem garage (11m x 4m) packed floor to ceiling with all their possessions - Theirs was a lost cause. Another resident was away and the car in their garage could not be moved.

By the afternoon the water was getting close to floor level on G1 and it was pouring with rain. The truck delivering sand for sandbags had got stuck in traffic so we dug up the garden and filled the bags with soil and packed them around entrances. The water was also closing in on the electricity supply box outside and there was an electrician standing by who gave us good warning that the power was going to be cut. Fortunately there was an emergency generator which kept the lights in the garages on and the lift working.

By late afternoon the message came through that the water might get as high 1 or 2m inside the garages on G1, and that if we had another place we could stay we should seriously consider leaving - with the power out and the sewage pump stopped it wouldn't be good to stay there. While it was still light we packed some clothes and perishables from the fridge and went to our friends. During Tuesday night and Wednesday morning warnings were given about a much bigger increase in the river level during the peak of the king tides on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday combined with the water coming down the river, and we realised how high the water was really going to come. The communications given by the Brisbane City Council and Queensland state government were fantastic. The mayor and premier gave live media briefings every couple of hours informing people of what their flood-modelling experts expected and what people should be doing. They also showed computer models of how the city would flood and made available online maps showing which streets would be flooded.

In the end, the water in our building filled up G1 and reached about 1m high on G2 - The level where people had taken their possessions for safety, and where 3 cars had been left in their garages. Many other people around the city had been in similar situations and/or were not at home to be able to do anything.

Another factor is that it was not just areas on the banks of the Brisbane River which were flooded: Places far from the river which I wouldn't have expected to flood, but were low-lying or near a small creek were also underwater. One example is the area Rocklea which is where the fresh produce market is located. It's far from the Brisbane River and is the main distribution point for all of Queensland, and it was wiped out - Dozens of big warehouses mangled, and overturned trucks and semi-trailers strewn about.

Here's a good video summary of the floods in Brisbane showing our building and surrounding areas. Most of this is taken around our area and includes a shot of our apartment building.