Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

[don]

Australian Floodwaters

[housingcrashsurvivor]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Does anyone remember where I parked the car?

[mliu_01]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

someone stole my car.

[Shakespear]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Strange that alarm was not set off in the building to warn people that their parked cars are in danger. Strange

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

That vision is at Toowoomba high up on the range, the water then travelled down the mountain to a little town of Grantham and took out the entire town - and our food bowl. Many people will never be found. Brisbane then experienced a riverine flood of epic proportions when this water met other streams and rivers that combined. We have no fresh food distribution as the State fresh food market was inundated to roof height, Huge cold stores, major supermarket distribution Buildings and entire road and rail networks have disappeared. Thousands of homes are uninhabitable and as I type the stench of the mud and rotting "Things" is overpowering. It is our Katrina.
Currently you cannot buy a potato or any fruit/ tomatoes/lettuce ,Bread and milk is in short supply and price gouging is rampant. Supermarket shelves are empty of necessaries. The main Refinery is shut down and fuel supplies will be rationed. The port of Brisbane is closed due to debris and sunk boats. The entire Rivercat ferry operation are gone, Terminals washed away.
36 coal mines are inoperable, rail lines that service them are destroyed and face long reconstruction times. 112 bulk carriers sit idle awaiting coal that will take some time to get to them.
Some towns have no clean water and sewerage is every where. It not just here - an area the size of Texas and California is underwater in the three main states. Cotton /sugar/wheat and nearly all fresh food exports are destroyed. Homeowners are not covered by riverine flood in most cases and for some it will be the tipping point. We are now approaching our cyclone (hurricane) season and not one Dam has any ability to contain any more water and the ground is saturated. 3 cylcones are brewing and if any hit the eastern seaboard it will be game over. It will send Australia into negative growth as the costs alone for lost production will be 2-3% of GDP. China must expect power shedding as supplies of coal are scarce. Certainly our powerstations (all coal) will get first bite at the stocks
The clean up begins and let me tell you it is soul destroying but every able person and the three arms of the Defence force have been mustered.
You know it is disconcerting to see all around the World, Nature show its teeth. Its like a War against principalities on higher plane.
Like God doing Gods work !
I don't know if you can access it but -http://www.news.com.au/ will give you some understanding
P.S Yes my Family is safe and hat tip to I Tulip I had prepared storage of food/generator/ diesel fuel/long life milk/ cash on hand/Large freezer etc but Fresh food is a bastard to replace. Id love a potato /onion/apple and tomato.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thanks for the local reporting, Thunder. I had not understood the dimensions of this catastrophy until now.

[Rajiv]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thunder -- Hope things improve soon, and I hope that the Aussie Govt. takes the words of the MMT economists like Bill Mitchell and Steve Keen seriously, and do not rely upon the advice of the neoliberal economists. You guys need help, and need it fast. The resources are there to rebuild, but only if the politicians show some gumption!

[don]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thanks for the local reporting, Thunder. I had not understood the dimensions of this catastrophy until now.

From one story: The flooded area in Queensland, the worst-hit state, is equivalent to the combined area of Germany and France.

[housingcrashsurvivor]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Wow Thunder. That's some write-up. I really hadn't been following the story. Had no idea how serious is your situation. So sorry for my car park crack.

[shiny!]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

This is just unbelievable in its magnitude. thunderdownunder, my heart and prayers go out to you and your country.

Not intending to derail this thread, but I want to give everyone a tip for how to have fresh food during a crisis when food transportation is down:

For all of you who are still acquiring disaster preps, make sure to include sprouting seeds as part of your food storage plan. Just a handful or two of sprouts a day can provide plenty of nutrition to keep you healthy. The seeds take up very little space and will keep for years in a freezer.

Sprouts are many times more nutritious than their fully grown vegetables and you can grow them in your kitchen year-round. There are lots of fancy gizmos for growing sprouts, but all you really need is clean water, a widemouth glass quart Mason jar and a perforated lid. They make handy screen lids for sprouting but if you don't have one, nylon net and a rubber band works fine.

The Brassica sprouts are the most nutritious: kale, cabbage, radish, mustard and especially brocolli sprouts (studies have shown brocolli sprouts can help fight breast cancer). If you want to cook lentils or mung beans, pre-soaking them and letting them begin to sprout increases their protein and vitamin content and makes them more digestible.

I've had good luck ordering from www.wheatgrasskits.com

I hope this helps someone down the road.

[don]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

That video emphatically demonstrated how ill prepared most of are for natural calamities. The shocking unfolding of events, to those on scene as well as the viewers, made that manifest. This could serve as a training video.

I sincerely hope the people of Australia do not experience the political economic Katrina the US did, one that exposed its bankruptcy on a number of levels. It appears your military resources are available for full use and not deployed abroad propping up the national currency. You also don't have the race issue New Orleans had though I'm sure there's class issues in the flooded regions we know little about. In short, it appears your national response to this emergency is more old-school than neoliberal cut-and-run. That's encouraging to all of us.

[c1ue]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thunder,

My best wishes and I do hope for a speedy recovery once the floodwaters recede.

The sad part is that what is happening now was actually predicted nearly 10 years ago.

The report was buried as it was inconvenient to the AGW = drought in Queensland story; the money for a proposed dam to prevent a recurrence of the 1974 flooding was instead used to build a solar desalination plant for the time when everyone would be faced with too little water.

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Update - It brings tears to my eyes to see Australians rally. Thousands of unaffected local Brisbane volunteers have registered, been mustered, and bused into the areas by Lord mayor Campbell Newman. Every truck/ bobcat and loader is in use to clear the mess and the mud all Gratis. Some of the City will be inoperable for months due to inundation of electricals in basements. Mud is 4-6inches thick and it sticks(and stinks) like poo to a blanket. But move it, one broom and shovel at a time we are. Houses are being stripped of wall sheet doors and Kitchens, Bedding, fridges everything is gone for the homeowners.
It is not being said but some will not return to a functioning family home for 6months or more. Simply the task of rebuilding is beyond the ability of the available workforce and supplys of building material.
I am relieved that Looting has been all but non existent.
The Insurance companies are running and hiding behind the small print and there is a huge anger as they protect their bottom line - The truth is riverine flood is not covered under any policy unless specifically paid for. Homeowners thought that their policy covered them under "Flood damage" clause but the definition of Flood has three types and this riverine flood is specifically denied.
Then we have the shortages that the World will suffer but I will post that soon as a new thread.
Remember it is just not here on our eastern continent, Moonsoon rains are falling in the dry season in the Northern hemisphere, Brazil has suffered massive loss.
And we allow markets to gamble/speculate on Food - Damn them all to Hell

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Update - It brings tears to my eyes to see Australians rally. Thousands of unaffected local Brisbane volunteers have registered, been mustered, and bused into the areas by Lord mayor Campbell Newman. Every truck/ bobcat and loader is in use to clear the mess and the mud all Gratis. Some of the City will be inoperable for months due to inundation of electricals in basements. Mud is 4-6inches thick and it sticks(and stinks) like poo to a blanket. But move it, one broom and shovel at a time we are. Houses are being stripped of wall sheet doors and Kitchens, Bedding, fridges everything is gone for the homeowners.
It is not being said but some will not return to a functioning family home for 6months or more. Simply the task of rebuilding is beyond the ability of the available workforce and supplys of building material.
I am relieved that Looting has been all but non existent.
The Insurance companies are running and hiding behind the small print and there is a huge anger as they protect their bottom line - The truth is riverine flood is not covered under any policy unless specifically paid for. Homeowners thought that their policy covered them under "Flood damage" clause but the definition of Flood has three types and this riverine flood is specifically denied.
Then we have the shortages that the World will suffer but I will post that soon as a new thread.
Remember it is just not here on our eastern continent, Moonsoon rains are falling in the dry season in the Northern hemisphere, Brazil has suffered massive loss.
And we allow markets to gamble/speculate on Food - Damn them all to Hell

It's good to hear Queenslanders/Australians all pulling together....we saw the same during our Christchurch Quake here 5 months ago.

For every 1 @sshole, I saw 100 people just roll their sleeves up and getting stuck in.

Insurance wise, the first $100k of earthquake damage is covered by a government policy here. The only people NOT covered are those who didn't have any insurance.

What we are seeing is payout money NOT being spent yet...with I think a half billion paid out of an estimated $4 billion cost so far....maybe paying down debt? Or putting into savings instead of fixing/replacing property damage?

Best of luck Thunder.

[flintlock]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Why is so little of this reported in the US media? I just checked Drudge and Yahoo front page and nothing.