Queensland Flood Crisis - Day 2, 12 Jan 2011

This is the old jetty located right in front of our apartment block that was damaged in the 1974 floods, a reminder of the power of mother nature.  The river surpassed the height of this jetty in the 1974 floods.

Waking up to live updates and press conferences by a visibly shaken Queensland Premiere, Anna Bligh, it was hard to comprehend and believe that the worst was yet to come because it was a perfect sunny Queensland summer day. We are not called The Sunshine State for nothing, although, that was hard to believe in the past couple of months. Still watching the news and trying to assess the situation in order to decide what to do, text messages and calls that had started coming in from the night before from concerned family and friends started flooding in.  Many asking us to leave Brisbane and return to Kuala Lumpur before the airports were closed.   But how could we?  We were not in Brisbane on vacation, we live and we work here.  Our lives were here. Isn't it only fair that we get through this together with our friends and neighbours who were at risk of losing everything?

Our next door neighbour was determined to wait it out in her apartment.  She could live without electricity she said, and shared her stock of blackout candles with us. Despite our suburb being listed in the high flood risk zone and we were advised to move to higher ground, we were still undecided, since we lived high up on the fourth floor.  It was frightening to read on twitter that suburbs in the city were already waist high in water on the second floor of apartment buildings.  I need to emphasise here that Brisbane is a modern metropolitan, with highly advanced technological infrastructure.  To have houses submerged up to their rooftops in muddy flood water is beyond surreal.

A friend who lived a 10 minute walk away and relatively higher up hill than us offered us her place as she was leaving town for a couple of days. After much discussion, we decided to take her up on the offer. Being on the fourth floor, it wasn't the water that worried us as much as the loss of power. Power loss meant no electricity, no electricity meant food in the fridge would deteriorate in the summer heat, loss of communication due to batteries running out in our laptops and mobiles, no updates from the telly and possibly no fresh water from pump failure. It is staggering, the things we take for granted but with a 2 year old who doesn't understand what is going on, not having fresh milk is the end of the world.

So, as hubs was gathering whatever food we had managed to stock up, I went to get the car (which was parked on a hill about a 10 minute walk away). As soon as I exited the apartment building and entered the street, a crowd of people were already building up. Flood waters from the storm drains had started flooding the streets and were rising up quickly. Police had started cordoning off the streets and roads leading in and out of our place.  At first we thought well that's it, we were too late and were trapped in our building, but we decided that I could try to park one street away, which meant having to lug our things and supplies, but it was a chance. By the time we had everything in the car, the water was already knee-deep.

The access road/junction leading to our building.  This happened in under 10 minutes.

 Trying to cross a bridge that didn't go OVER a creek, but through it.

Praying that we weren't too late to avoid flooding roads, we made a decision to evacuate further away to an area not listed as a flood zone. After a couple of detours due to closed roads and crossing a bridge where the river under it had started flowing over it, we found ourselves at a friend's place with 4 other families including the host family. Relief was reflected on everyone's faces but you could feel a strong hidden undercurrent of mixed emotions brewing underneath. In between cooking and organising for five families, everyone was glued to the telly. It was a restless, sleepless night. Some were exhausted from no sleep the night before due to heavy lifting, trying to salvage as much furniture as possible from the lower floors and sandbagging their houses and properties. Plus we were still waiting for the river to peak at 4am to know the real extent of the damage and devastation. Projected levels of the peak were expected to be higher than the devastating floods of 1974. There really was not much to do but to wait and see.

 Carindale "Flood Relief Centre".  Thank God for friends in high places.  Literally.