Gratefully surreal

(A few emergency preparedness insights at the bottom half of this blog entry -- FWIW.)



Monday was my wife's first day at her new job: she'd left one uni- versity, and switched to another uni- versity across town.

And by Wed- nesday, both campuses were half-flooded. Weird.


A goodly chunk of down- town Brisbane is now under water: the waters peaked, appar- ently, in the early morning of Thurs- day, Jan. 13th. There's been a few incoming tides that have hindered the river's draining. Luckily, no rain (neither here, nor upstream) for the last few days -- so the total height was actually about a metre less than anticipated.


Mean- while, we're all the way on the other side of town. So except for the grocery stores being a bit under-stocked (there was a run on groceries the day or two before the flood's peak, and trucks haven't been able to get in to re-supply the stores), everything has been pretty normal on this side of town: we ran some errands at the mall, then spent most of the day at the park, with the kids; very few mudpuddles in sight (except for our front yard!).

Oh: And at the mall, about one out of every fifteen shops had a "Closed due to staff attending their flooded homes" sign on their (closed!) security grille.


Apparently, there's a few types of flooding. One is river flooding -- which we're super-unlikely to get, in our part of Brisbane. I think that's when people upstream from you get too much rain. Another type is stream/creek flooding -- when you have more rain than the local creeks can handle, so it finds additional drainage routes, like across roads and lawns. We get a bit of that on our side of town -- but if we get a gap of 4-5 hours between rains, it all drains away: it's just a temporary inconvenience.


By the way: In a "Survival at Sea" book that I have, it says that adults need a litre of water a day -- three litres in hot climates or when exerting yourself -- to survive. So over the weekend (prior to the main rush; in hindsight, we should've done this), we stocked up on liquids (in case the water mains break, or the city water supply becomes tainted). Bought some of those mega-jugs of water, plus extra does of soda pop (which we'd eventually use). Also stocked up on canned goods a bit (again, really should've done that sooner).

The Red Cross says that you should have enough food and water (per person!) for two weeks. There's a survival "rule of three" that says that (approximately), you can survive:

• Three minutes without air
• Three hours without shelter
• Three days without water, and
• Three weeks without food

Thus, we stocked up on liquids (water, soda pop, juice, etc.) -- figuring that if we under-estimated on the food, we'd be grumpy and uncomfortable, but generally OK (we'd just start eating sticks of butter, and drinking the olive oil...). But water, you **need**.

If the power went out, we'd have to use up the contents of the 'fridge as best as we could. But we could cook stuff, as our neighbors to either side have gas ranges in their kitchens. But -- we really **should** get one of those camp stoves.

And given that every two to three summers we seem to lose electricity for a day, getting one of those smaller portable generators for a few hundred bucks would be a good idea. Particularly since we have a cluster of five houses of family members within a few blocks of each other: many people would benefit from it. Refrigerators and freezers keep the cold in for a fairly long time, as long as you keep the door shut. So, we could pass it around, "refreshing" each 'fridge and freezer, to keep the food from going off.


In contrast, Mormons advocate having a year's supply of food. I don't know that we'll go quite **that** far. But certainly, I think having a month's supply of food and liquids for your household is not excessive, and both achievable (stash it under the bed?) and affordable.

In the case of a natural disaster, you **hope** that the authorities will get to you in a timely manner. But they may be otherwise occupied.


--GG

Minor update on floods

75% of Queensland (the state that Brisbane is in) has been declared a disaster zone. And edges of downtown are underwater.

The flooding for Brisbane is projected to peak at 3am tomorrow morning: the Brisbane River bisescts Brisbane, and the tides coming **in** will clash with the water trying to drain **out**.

Some interesting (albeit large filesize) simulations showing the neighborhoods around the Brisbane River that are expected to flood are here, on the Brisbane City Council website.

Much of the water is then expected to move south overland to flood New South Wales (the state where Sydney is).

At least we have blue skies today, rather than rain: that changes the projections, giving us an estimated 1.0 metre **shorter** peak level of water.


The number of families trapped on (pitched!) roofs for many hours -- with just minutes of notice -- makes me think that flood-prone people should have a "go kit" for lashing one's family to the slippery roof: a hand-cranked "eggbeater"-style drill and reamer (for making holes); some S-hooks and rope (for lashing yourself to the holes), and some tarps and blankets.


--GG

Flooding update

Previously, I'd said we had no worries regarding the flooding here in Queensland, Australia.

The situation has changed.


So far, so good for our specific neighborhood. It rains sometimes, then stops. Sometimes heavy rain, sometimes a drizzle. Water covers sections of the road, about axle-deep -- but we have a four-wheel drive with a pretty high undercarriage (and the water isn't "rushing" water -- it's fairly still) -- so we just drive on through. And four or five hours after it stops raining, the standing water has drained off.

However: Today they shut down parts of the downtown area, and some neighborhoods adjacent to downtown (most with "Valley" in their name...) have flooded. Also, we were phoned about 2pm to come get the boys out of daycare: they were shutting it down early, although a handful of staff would be staying behind to look after the kids whose parents weren't able to get them.

They're expecting the floods to equal, or possibly surpass, the 1974 floods (which were the largest since the 1893 floods -- a nice graph and timeline here).


For the last "big" flood (1974), the water blocked off sections on the road, up and down the street from the trio of properties belonging to my wife's family -- so they were cut off for about a week. However, it didn't reach the houses.

We have about a metre of slop, I reckon: as long of the flood levels don't exceed the 1974 levels by more than a metre, it shouldn't reach the house.


I'll try to post a blog entry every day or two. If it goes more than two or three days without a blog posting, it could mean that I'm still at home, but just lacking phone service (DSL) or electricity. Somewhat ironically: if we get evacuated, I probably **would** continue to post blog entries; presumably the centre we go to would have some sort of internet access (in this modern day and age; for contacting family).


--GG