AUSTRALIA FLOODING

Australia is currently experiencing huge flooding from excessive rain.

Deaths and destruction... and inland tsunamis...

My news compared it to the U.S. Hurricane Katrina in destruction area - thankfully not equal in death toll - but the flooding continues.

My thoughts and prayers are with all our Australian brothers and sisters who are rescuing in these conditions and all those who are fleeing their homes to safety.

I am sure there is much better news on it - maybe FFN webmaster can post some, since everyone in Australia is working their tails off.

Google areas such as - Queensland Australia

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/23819063

http://www.smh.com.au/business/queensland-shuts-down-20110112-19obp.html

http://www.newsmild.com/australia-flood-death-toll-rises-rains-cause-more-havoc

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/23815550

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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on January 17, 2011 at 12:18pm

I can't find anything of that quality for Brazil.

Photo satellite coverage of Brazil might not be as good, or the cloud cover could have been too dense to get good satellite photos, or ???

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Permalink Reply by Fabulous Heather Days of Summer on January 17, 2011 at 1:10pm

or Brazil is not that important to the world... so the satellites are elsewhere...

Thanks for looking...

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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on January 17, 2011 at 2:31pm

Commercial satellite coverage doesn't necessarily imply importance. It could just be based upon commercial viability.

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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on January 19, 2011 at 6:49pm

Just a bit of an update on my response area:

I'm located in the Macedon Ranges.

Our busy week began on Wednesday the 12th at about 0730 with the first call for assistance.

Between the 12th and about 2100 hours on the 16th, our Unit recieved 266 calls for assistance.

A Divisional Command Centre was established and I assumed the role of Divisional Commander for the night shifts.

The DivCom ran 24 hours a day over that period with at it's peak upto 20 trucks/crews operating, with SES, CFA and DSE crews mobilised.

The large bulk of the calls was for floods- water entering property or threatening property, along with the usual leaking roofs, etc as expected with heavy rains.

At about 2200 hours on the 13th, the weather changed considerably with very high winds and only a bit of rain (though it did continue to rain, bu not as heavy as it had). With this weather change, the jobs changed to trees on houses, cars, property, etc as well as flloding. This also included some interesting calls where uprooted trees had even blocked some rivers whichin turn created other flood problems.

An interesting bit of info- we started to run low on sandbags on the afternoon of the 13th (totally running out about 200 hours), however with such a large scale (and multiple) flood events unfolding around Australia, there is a national shortage of sandbags. We had to wait nearly 8 hours for restocking of sandbags, whereas normally we could make a call and within 1-2 hours, could be restocked from Regional or State stockrooms!

Makes for interesting planning in theDivCom....

For our area, we're petty much wound up, however we have deployed some equipment (lighting units, etc) into other areas and have crews on standby if needed.

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Permalink Reply by Fabulous Heather Days of Summer on January 20, 2011 at 10:57am

Thanks Lutan for the update.

I am glad things have turned around and are moving forward.

I appreciate the details. I have been praying for your country.