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-led system is currently 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 under 50 houses went under but nowhere near the 8.1m catastrophe of March 2010 when over 200 houses were inundated. Mitchell was still in a bad way after last night with 400 people in shelters. After the meeting when I went out to have a look for myself, I was 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 own experience of watching Roma going under, now six or seven times (I've lost count) in 2 years, told me this was bad given there was a lot of water to come. Many people in the flood zone seemed to think so too 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 work 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 and 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 in town rang up frantic to say the woman worked at her place and what did I know. I said I thought she was safe but that wasn't what she was hearing. I rang the police but they say they were "still getting to the bottom of it." I suddenly 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?

It was. At 4pm I attended another Disaster Group Meeting. 8.5m was the new prediction and this was "unchartered 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 stabilised at 8.5m. With the worst, and it was the worst, over it was time to hit the recovery centres. There were two. The Rec Centre was where everyone could sleep and the RSL Hall where people could eat. There people were tucking into KFC provided free by the local store. I just 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 dark and difficult days ahead.

Mitchell gets near record flooding

Some huge rainfall totals have left the nearby town of Mitchell cut off, some 90km west of Roma (and 570km south west of Brisbane). The situation is already 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 hopping on a helicopter to check it out (landing apparently contrary to local council directions). I was here in Roma running a solo operation trying to put out tomorrow's paper, attending the local 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. Frazzled doesn't begin to describe my day...

We did get hold of some great pictures, through our Facebook contacts. First, by way of contrast, this is the Maranoa River at Mitchell last Saturday, looking east towards Roma. I took this photo when I though the river was swollen.

















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 completely cut off and with heavy rain still falling, the water reached a height of 8.75m at the Mitchell Bridge at lunchtime. Some 15 homes had water over the floorboards with another 40 to 50 houses expected to suffer damage with an expected peak of 9m (0.8m higher than 1990). With more rain expected 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 guages have been steady since around 4pm today, rain is still falling havily (as it is here in Roma). Local grazier and upcoming council election candidate Kent Morris told us heavy rain occured upstream this afternoon. "The River is rising again at Currawong tonight, expect to see the Maranoa start rising again around 11.pm," 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 you add the waters from the swollen Balonne (via Surat) into 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. Leao has been beside her grave for two days waiting for his owner to return. Santana and Leao lived in Teresopolis near Rio de Janeiro where the latest human death toll from the landslides is 785 with two in five from Teresopolis.

Founded by the Swiss burghers of Friburg in 1819, the nearby city of Nova Friburgo fared even worse with 365 deaths. Both cities are in the Região Serrana of Rio de Janeiro state in south eastern Brazil some 60km north of Rio itself. Região Serrana means mountain district and many dwellings in the region are exposed to landslide hazards due to the steep terrain. On 11 January it started to rain in the region, heavily. In Teresopolis it rained 144mm 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. 6,000 people were made homeless and another 8,000 had to leave their houses and go 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. Army 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. It was, but it was a human-made one.

According to watchdog group Contas Abertas, the federal government budgeted $263m for disaster prevention last year but only spent $82m. And only 1 percent of that went to Rio state while a whopping 54 percent went to Bahia, a state that had 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.

While little is spoken about corruption, even less is known about Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, a citizen of Teresopolis. She was one of the town’s 138,000 inhabitants and she was 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 presumably was also carried away in the torrent. Her tan crossbreed dog Leao somehow survived. And his picture mourning Cristina has reverberated across the media 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,” said added. “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.” But 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 commences the clean-up from its devastating floods, world attention is finally moving to other major floods zones across the world. One of the worst hit is in Sri Lanka where flood waters are finally starting to recede in the worst-hit areas 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 the Districts of Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa were flooded due to torrential monsoon rain from Saturday, 8 January with up to 300mm falling daily in some parts for five days of intense rain. More than a million people were temporarily displaced by the rains that killed at least 43 people. (photo:Sri Lankan disaster management centre)

Yesterday the country's disaster management centre reported over a million people were affected. As the flood 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 internally displaced persons 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 on 20 January. Bragg said her mission would highlight Sri Lanka’s humanitarian needs and she would advocate on behalf of the most 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 likely destroyed at least half of the season’s harvest in the eastern province, will also 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 completely destroyed and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said today 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.”

Meanwhile many roads were impassable for the five days of heavy rain. According to a UK Foreign Office travel advisory some access roads to the east of the country are impassable. Areas in the central province such as Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Badulla have experienced earth slips due to the rain. Drinking water is now scarce in the region and there is a large danger of water-borne diseases.

Sri Lankan aid workers say there could be outbreaks of dengue fever and cholera and buried landmines left over from the county’s long civil war may have become 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 in protests. “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 but some media including the Christian Science Monitor are hopeful the floods will be an opportunity to 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 has endured in the last three weeks was war with constantly changing battlegrounds. Nature did battle with life across a warzone of a million square kilometres. Around 70 towns and about a quarter of a million people have been directly affected and millions more indirectly. (photo from Toowoomba flood:Wikipedia)

As of Saturday night 16 people were confirmed dead and 15 more are missing, likely to have been washed away by nature’s heavy artillery. Among the dead were Donna Rice, 43 and her 13-year-old son Jordan who were swept off the roof of the 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.

The others who died were in Grantham, Murphy’s Creek, Marburg, Dalby and Durack as the Lockyer Valley took the brunt of the savage attack. All that water ended up in the Bremer River causing further havoc in Ipswich before heading on to Brisbane where it caused mayhem in the riverside suburbs and associated creeks on Wednesday and Thursday.

Normal routines were obliterated as the city shut down and emergency workers took over. No-one batted an eye-lid as Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale threatened vigilante justice by turning supposed looters into “flood markers”. There may have been some small-scale looting but it was likely over-sold by media just as they exaggerated the natural response of people wanting to see what happened as “rubbernecking”. A more profound reaction was shown today with reports of over 7,000 volunteers showing up to help with the clean-up.

One of the saddest sights for me in the Brisbane floods was the footage of the floating pontoon sailing 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 certainly a structure I will remember with fondness. I used to often ride along its path which 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).

There were shorter ways of cycling from Wooloowin to the city but none so attractive as the paths that hugged the river. The pontoon at the end of Merthyr Road was the best part as it went right out on the river. It was exhilarating to be on a bikepath in the Brisbane River’s thalweg. You were part of the water traffic and if you were foolish enough, you could attempt to race against the Citycats as they glided past elegantly over 20 knots an hour.

On Thursday morning it was the pontoon itself that was dashing past at 25 knots. It broke clear of its moorings in the height of the flood around 4am. The Brisbane River was peaking at 4.46 metres. The combination of all the water coming down from the ranges and into the river system, plus the necessary spill-offs to save Wivenhoe Dam and finally a king tide pushing water in from the coast, put too much strain on the design. Off it went towards Moreton Bay. The flood was high enough to do great damage but a metre below the 1974 record peak the experts thought it was going to break.

With a ground floor unit in a street that floodmaps say got some water in 1974, that news was a personal relief. Elsewhere the destruction was intense. Mayor Campbell Newman said the river transport infrastructure was "substantially destroyed" and 20,000 homes flooded. It was the city's sixth biggest flood in its 170 year history. Those who lived through the last big one in 1974 like John Birmingham have it branded in their memories as the "warning from the west”.

Wivenhoe Dam was one answer to the 1974 western warning. It gave Brisbane massive support during the 2011 flood. Its engineers had to open sluice gates that contributed to the inundation but it does not bear thinking about what might have happened to Brisbane this week if Wivenhoe was not there. Its role re-opened the debate over dams. An awkward alliance of Marxist left and centre-right libertarians will struggle to sell confident environmentalists there is any good in dams.

Standing in the centre, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has been praised for her disaster response. Her role became that of communicator-in-chief and the bearer of bad news. Flanked by silent politicians, police chiefs and a signer for the deaf, she did what she does best: she mastered the detail.

The media ate it up. The floods are a great news story in an otherwise flat time of year. The commercial TV stations tried as usual to shamelessly turn themselves into the story but it was old-fashioned radio that stole the show. ABC Local Radio was consistently the best outlet for latest news on the floods across the state. Unlike the 24-hour television stations it didn’t need pictures to sell the stories. It was able to use its wide network of reporters to link in well with the goodwill it has from its listeners and providers of content. Newer media showed their uses 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 of those rumours emerged on Twitter which was its usual chaotic self. The #qldfloods hashtag was a goldmine of some astonishing images from the flood regions.

Also on Twitter was the self-serving and mostly useless “prayforaustralia” campaign (Brisbane is a sprawling city but NOT the size of France and Germany) which trended across the world during the “war”. Other than making those praying feel good about themselves, it didn’t achieve much. Far better 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 now been declared a flood disaster zone - an area about 1.3 million sq m. This is roughly the size of Peru, the world’s 20th largest country. The widespread devastation is finally heading to Queensland’s largest population centre, with a major flood predicted to peak on Thursday. And Brisbane has had it coming for some time.
(picture of flooding in Ipswich today courtesy of the Toowoomba Chronicle)

It was all so different in January 2010 when a parched Brisbane had 40.2mm of rain for the entire month. It was the back end of a typical 10-year El Nino Southern Oscillation weather pattern that was about to break spectacularly. February (272mm) and March (162) had high falls. The back end was worse still - October had 306mm and December 479mm.

12 months on and La Nina now in her element, things have changed drastically for the city. In all 1658mm fell in 2010 (the highest since 1974) and all the signs are for a repeat performance this summer. After a few dry days to see in the new year, 41.8mm fell on Thursday. There was another 35.6mm on Friday and 23mm over the weekend. Then yesterday, the monsoon hit and dumped an incredible 110.8mm in 24 hours – three times what fell in the entire month of January 2010.

Brisbane’s rainfall pattern was repeated through the southern and central parts of the state. After getting a drenching from October through to Christmas, the soaking catchments were unable to deal with the deluge dumped on Boxing Day in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Tasha. On 27 December (the day I tried unsuccessfully to return to Roma after spending Christmas at Maryborough), flooding broke out in several parts of the state. Dalby and Chinchilla, towns I needed to get through, went under. So did Warwick. All three towns are in the Murray-Darling basin and they sent walls of floodwaters to downstream centres such as Condamine, Surat and St George. In relatively flat country it could take many more 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. On the Burnett, towns like Eidsvold, Mundubbera and Gayndah all suffered flooding and the waters finally made their way to Bundaberg where streets around the iconic distillery all went under. Further north still, tributaries of the Fitzroy started filling up. The Dawson River rose so high, the entire 450 people of Theodore had to be airlifted to safety. The Nogoa River reached record levels exceeding waters in Fairbairn Dam over 100 percent capacity. The dam could not save the nearby town of Emerald from intense flooding.

The swollen 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, the large town of Rockhampton was the next Queensland settlement to bear the flood burden with the town closed off and the Fitzroy peaking around 9.4m last Wednesday.

Still the rain kept coming across Queensland. It was the Mary River’s turn on the weekend, a fourth river basin swelling up causing major flooding in Kilkevan, Gympie and upstream at 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 below Toowoomba and into the vulnerable Lockyer Valley below. Small towns like Withcott, Murphy’s Creek and especially Grantham had no chance as an 8-meter high “inland tsumani” rushed by, tearing houses apart and stacking cars on top of each other leaving many dead.

Back up 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 myself 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 18 January.

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

Brisbane, with a quarter of Queensland’s population, has been watching the growing the flood crisis with horror as it got steadily closer. The massive Wivenhoe Dam, built as a lesson from the devastating 1974 floods, was straining to keep its waters sitting at a seemingly impossible 175 percent full. It is pumping record amounts of water through its five gates but is still increasing. Meanwhile that 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 produce a deluge that would make the event in Grantham seem like a picnic.

That is the worst case scenario. But even more sober predictions make grim reading for Brisbanites. Premier Anna Bligh has conceded the effect will be the city’s worst flood since 1893, with up to 40,000 properties at risk of being affected when the Brisbane River peaks on Thursday. Evacuation centres have been set up and the CBD shut down adding the already heavy economic impact of the crisis. It was no surprise to hear the Aussie dollar fell 2 cents today against the greenback.

Out 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 basis there is no upstream water to worry about and the rains have mostly missed us out. Nearby Surat is a different story but there is now a common thread here as both towns become isolated due to the flood crisis to the east. Supermarket shelves have emptied of basics and there is no chance of re-supplies for possibly weeks to come. This is the “invisible flood” where businesses suffer despite having no waters running 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 many types of flood relief. Many other western regions will face similar issues. Dealing with these issues will cause authorities many headaches in the months, and possibly years 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 yesterday after a very wet Christmas with friends in Maryborough. Normally it’s a fairly straightforward if dull five and a half hour drive of about 520km. But yesterday was never going to be a straightforward day.


(photo: Jimbour Creek around midday yesterday)

A quick squizz at a few Internet sites told me that first thing in the morning. The Bureau of Meteorology told me there was a nasty storm cell heading my way 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 saw Charley’s Creek in Chinchilla on the drive over 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.

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 Kilkevan and Goomeri where the traffic was less but the rains were 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 and 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 much 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 was 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 dropped. 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 talked 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 car.
“Any other way through?”
“Nope, apart from the road back to Bell and that won’t be open much longer,” he answered.
He went ahead 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 the 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 man 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," he said.
“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 were still visible but the water had sneaked 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. Now it would be plain sailing to Dalby, I thought.

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 had gotten within 5km of Dalby and though I had made it when I saw the recognisable 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 into 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. Worse still 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 agonizing slow wait for the truck while the islands of road receded as the oceans of water rose. While waiting for the truck, 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 I thought, 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 Creek 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 game 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 and 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 0.4m 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 0.4m 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. Yes, Nanango was possibly 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 near 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.

Pakistan enduring worst ever floods

The still rising floods that struck Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces and that now threaten 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 are affected it is difficult to believe the true death toll is not much higher. The floods have laid waste a 1,000kms swathe of Pakistani territory along the Indus River. After two weeks of pounding, heavy rain is still falling adding to the floodwaters and 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 are particularly concerned about the needs of 600,000 people, who remain completely cut off in the north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They also said the floods have now reached the southern province of Sindh flooding hundreds of villages there. Rain is forecast there for the next three days. OCHA said they expected the amount required for the relief effort over the coming months will be several hundreds of millions of dollars.

The floods began last month after record monsoon rains, which were 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 the 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 to working order 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.

Meanwhile 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 secured promises of assistance from the countries he had visited - the UAE, France and the UK. But these promises did not cool down 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 the Barrage doors, but the water pressure there 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 out yesterday. There was still plenty of water on the road but it looked passable today. 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 yet certain when or if she would come at all given that 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 of hearing 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 hospice 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 so 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 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 collapse 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. It was suggested they go back to the core group for tomorrow’s meeting, a fact that 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 bloody 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 and began to come down hard. The rain stayed hard and loud all night making sleep difficult and fitful. I had to be up to report on a 6.45am sports breakfast meeting at the council buildings about five minutes drive from where I lived. I thought it would have been cancelled at the last minute but I had to check it out. It didn’t take long for me to realise 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 simply 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 struggling through the waves. The water was up to the step of our office and still rising. In about two minutes of taking photos I was soaked to the skin. I retreated back to the car and went 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 an amazingly large amount of sports administrators turned up to hear how council was going to change its management of local sport. I sat there saturated and took notes all the while realising the real story was elsewhere. By the time the meeting finished, it had stopped raining. The waters had 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 thongs (footwear) and was ready for combat duties.

It was soon 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 it was now inundated by the time I got there. I saw a boat about to ferry a lady with her groceries across and hitched a lift with them into the flood zone. I thought initially the two boaties were SES officers but no, they were just two Santos workers who were heading to find their friend who was stranded in a ditch somewhere. 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 and it turns out she was Belgian but had a Roma boyfriend. But 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 further 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”. At closer inspection, it was local MP Howard Hobbs’ media person 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 cursing the fact I had no t-shirt pocket I had to carry my mobile phone in my hand. Towards the end of the street the waters were getting almost chest high and the current was getting stronger. Here several low-lying houses were inundated and their occupants long gone. Concerned about losing my mobile and camera in deeper water, I retreated back the way I came.
Back on the corner, Ann was still there and 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.
“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 didn’t need a second invitation. I hopped in the front cab which was already crowded. Darren introduced me to Kate who was pregnant as well as her toddler Zoe and their small dog. Darren was taking his human and canine crew to higher ground.
Darren was a bit of a character. He 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 about 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 started to head 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 said I would go along.

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

Darren borrowed a forklift and loaded his truck up with more sandbags. He picked up his mate Mark who had yet to see the flood and the three of us drove back past the flooded bridge. The Bungil peaked at 8.1m around lunchtime but waters were still rising around town. Most houses in the flood zone 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 near ground level. With nothing left 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 leaving their home's fate to Mother Nature. The rain stayed away all day so the waters stopped rising further - though there was menacing talk of waters up north that was 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 milled around the back of the truck in totally 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 from there to the office where I caught up with all the news from elsewhere. I heard the RSL hall was transformed to an emergency response centre and trudged up to take a look.

I had gotten 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 from the community volunteered to house the evacuees. All that was left when I arrived were three fellas from an old folk’s home near the creek that was flooded out. I talked to Henry Steers, who was 77 and rescued with his 16-year-old dog Boss.
Henry said he and his mates were glad to be rescued by the SES though some of the others 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 the 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, 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 too.
“It’s beautiful here, I got a hot meal of potato and sausages."
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 from the community. It was proving harder to place Henry because of Boss 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 up high. But as the waters steadily rose all day, their worries increased. The neighbours below started to move out, the waters were lapping below the floorboards and baby snakes started appearing around the house. As darkness approached, the McGilvrays became convinced 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 Andrew.
But first he 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 with the horses 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 decided to stay 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. It was raining heavily again. Nevertheless I slept the sleep of the dead, knowing that another big day lay ahead with the possible promise of more floods to come.

Flooding in Roma

The area of Roma I'm living in is doing a passable imitation of Venice at the moment. At around 5pm yesterday evening the normally trickling Bungil Creek peaked at 7 meters. It was enough to burst the banks and flood over the two bridges near my house. The roads around me became rivers and the gardens turned into swimming pools. So far, it is hasn’t been high enough to get into the houses but the Bureau of Meteorology is saying we are not finished with the rain.

The speed was a bit of a shock to me though the warning signs had been growing all week. We’ve had several decent falls during the week and the creek had been steadily getting higher. The cyclepath along the creek has been impassable since Monday but I still wasn’t expecting the water to get to the road level.

There was another huge downpour late on Thursday night and it was starting to wreak havoc Friday morning. I got up to go to work and had to cross the creek to get to Roma’s town centre. The waters had burst the banks and the bridge was under water. That was what the sign said ‘road under water’ not ‘road closed’. Nevertheless I wasn’t keen to drive across in my 2WD car until I saw someone else do it safely. I cagily followed the car across the bridge without incident.

When I got to the office, it was clear the town had suffered storm water drain damage during the night. The waters had gone down but they left the pavements caked with mud and very slippery. In the height of the downpour, some of the drains started to overflow and spilled water onto the lower side of the street. It was the second time this week that had happened. To be on the safe side I parked on the higher side in case it should happen again.

In the office the news soon came through from the SES they were expecting the floods to be bigger than 1997’s version. I knew immediately it was going to be a big day. A few weeks ago I’d done a retrospective in the paper about Roma floods of the past and the 1997 pics were impressive. As were the ones from the several flood events of the 1980s. Much of inland Australia is on a floodplain and Roma is no different. It has been flooded often enough that it caused a 19th century move of the town centre away from the creek.

I figured I would be taking lots of photos for the 2010 flood event so decided I needed to be dressed appropriately and drove home for a change of clothes. The bridge over the creek was now closed but there was a back way via a second higher bridge. I got past a couple of places where the road was “under water” but it was just safe enough to get through. When I got home, the waters were approaching the gate and my landlady was moving everything upstairs that needed to be kept dry. I grabbed a t-shirt, pair of shorts and thongs (footwear, just in case anyone is wondering) and headed back to town the way I came.

On Bungil St just south of where I lived the creek had also flooded the road. The problem here was that there was no other passable road in for those who lived on this street east of the creek. There was one other way in on foot via the Big Rig and I decided to check that out. The Big Rig celebrates Roma’s oil heritage and there is a kiddie train that goes over a footbridge on the creek. The waters had not risen that high and I crossed the footbridge to get to the east side of Bungil Road. I also had to cross the waterlogged sports grounds but it was easy enough barefoot.

The locals I met all looked happy and seemingly unfazed by the rising waters that were starting to get into their gardens. One owner admitted he did not have flood insurance but the atmosphere was almost party-like as they gathered around to admire the novelty of the rising waters. Only once was my own equanimity challenged when some kid casually asked me (perhaps hoping for a reaction) “had I seen a snake?” I said I hadn’t and he told me he’d only seen a baby one. I guess the waters would be flushing them out a bit.

There was an SES boat on hand to ferry people back to the “mainland” west of the creek but that was only being used by a few people to get to the shops or pick up kids from school. No-one was evacuating here just yet. One guy in his 80s was glued to his radio and swore loudly at the council who “couldn’t effin well tell him when the waters would peak”.

In this little field trip I had a camera but left the note pad in the car. I waded back to the footbridge (now extremely wary for snakes) and decided to go back to the office to download the photos. But before that I decided to check out the creek crossing on the main Brisbane road into town. Here the waters were flowing rapidly but just below the bridge so traffic wasn’t affected. While taking photos from the bridge, another 80 year old man joined me. I'd met him before and he sat down on the barrier next to me and chatted about floods past.

He had a cane which he twirled around to add dramatic effect to the stories he told. However I was worried because the shoulder on the bridge was narrow and I thought he would wave it into oncoming traffic which he had his back turned to. This was particularly dangerous whenever the occasional massive road train would shudder past us at 70kph barely a metre away. When I warned him of the impending danger, he pointed his cane imperiously at the dividing line on the ground and said “they can’t come past that”. True, but I was more worried about his cane in the air than on the ground.

Anyway, neither of us came to harm and I went back to the office. The other journalist had been out taking photos too and we compared notes before I headed back to the Creek. Again I went over the footbridge at the Big Rig and waded across the waterlogged grounds. Immediately I noticed the road had been become more flooded in the hour or so I was away and nearly every garden was inundated. Still the mood was optimistic and no house was yet flooded as far as I could tell. One owner on a side street pointed to the brackish water outside his house and said that meant it had peaked. But a few minutes later the SES guys with the boat told me the waters were still rising.

As the rain returned, I went back to the western side of the creek for some more photos. The Emergency guys there told me the creek was now up to 7m and still rising. As if the sight of roads resembling rivers wasn’t surreal enough, a rainbow rose above the scene. It was another picture to add to a great collection today. Finally around 6pm I decided to get back home on foot. I went over the creek bridge that was not overflowing but by now all the access roads to my house were closed. I had to walk back barefoot on the centre of the road as the water rose to waist level in parts.
At my house the waters had crossed the gate and waterlogged the entire garden. The water level had risen to the first of three steps into the house. Although the waters receded again overnight, they are still predicting rain for the next three days and it won’t take much for the inundation to rise further. One thing I’ve learned over the last few days is to not be surprised what water can do.