Another close call

This evening started like many others.  Work until about 6:00pm, head for home etc.  Michael called me at about 6:00pm to ask me when I was coming home because it looked like hail and a big storm.  I'd been caught up in a meeting and we hadn't looked at the bom site all afternoon.

6:30pm I left work just at the beginning of the storm, the rain was falling fast and heavy and half way home I realised that I should have just waited it out at work.  It was so heavy that it was hard to drive and there was water running everywhere.

6:40pm When I got to the beginning of our road, I noticed that all of the small causeways were full, even though it had just been raining for ten minutes or so.  The stretch of road past the neighbour's house was almost a foot underwater. I thought again about turning back, but was closer to home and decided that if the creek causeway was underwater, then I would wait it out back at work.

6:45pm When I reached the creek, it was about 5 inches above the concrete causeway.  When I left home this morning it was running so low that you could almost say that in a day or two it would be completlye dry again. Because of the speed in which it had risen, I started to panic and called Michael. I told him that if I crossed the creek there was a chance we would not get out again tonight. But I also didn't want to go back the way I'd come, which was also getting higher.

6:46pm I crossed the creek and alerted Michael that we would pack straight away when we got back home. He was waiting for me at the gate, just 30 seconds later. I stepped out of the car into ankle deep water and walked through the gate to get in Michael's car (the ruts mean I cant take my car past the gate). The ruts were almost full of water and I stepped straight into one up to my knees in my stockings and shoes.

6:50pm At home we packed quickly and I called work to say we'd be back within 10 minutes for a room.

7:00pm We got back to the creek in the car and it had gone up another  foot or so, but it running much faster than only 15 minutes before. We decided not to chance it because we've seen it at all heights now and made a deal with ourselves not to cross it if we cant see any of the concrete and it has waves in it (it was as high as the video I posted back in December).

We turned back to go home.

7:02pm We reach our gate and a wave of water riding on top of the water already flowing it coming towards us down the driveway. It was literally a wave surfing on top of the flow. Within seconds it was flowing hard down the driveway and road and into the neighbour's paddock. We realised that something larger had given way at that moment and we were watching the first gush.

We reversed back to the creek to have another go and break our rule.

7:04pm The water was up another foot or so, to the tops of the white indicators (see the movie I posted from Sunday 9th and you'll get the picture).

We realised that the water was just rising everywhere and that we'd trapped ourselves with nowhere to go.  We tried to drive back up the driveway, thinking that it wasn't that deep after the initial wave but the back tyres got caught in a rut at the gate and we stalled.  Michael was able to reverse out of the submerged rut and we got back to a dryer part of the road. We sat in the car for a few minutes and pondered sitting there all night waiting for the water to subside.

A call from my boss confirmed what we had decided, that we would have to get out and wade back to the house, if we could.

We left our stuff in the car which we'd parked on a higher verge on the side of the road and started back to the driveway. Imagine me, in my gumboots, knee length work skirt tucked into undies,  work shirt, climbing a fence from knee deep water to knee deep water.

By this stage it was quite dark with lightning still lighting things up around. The rain had all but stopped. We had a small torch between us.  Michael went first and it was hard to stay on track because everything was underwater.  The whole paddock was a rushing lake. We walked small firm footsteps feeling for the compacted parts under our feet. If it wasn't so scary it would have been a hilarious scene in a movie.

When we got back to the house we inspected the laundry where our new washing machine was working away.  It was just delivered today and we were worried that with the rate that water had come up that it might have gone under the house again and into the laundry. Luckily the water didn't reach the house and the washing machine was safe.

Not taking any chances through, we emptied it out and hauled it up 8 steps to the back porch.(still in gumboot and afore mentioned attire).  Super human strength possible with all of that adrenalin.

We checked the bom and saw that the next storm was still a couple of hours away. Then I checked the site that monitors the creek where it goes under the bridge at Grandchester.  It went from a measily 0.33m at 6:50pm to a peak of 4.88m at 8:30pm. Almost at the levels where it was last Tuesday. Since 8:30pm, it has only dropped 30cm (it was 10pm when I last looked). Amazing. Just goes to show that after 6 days of searing heat and sunshine, the ground is still saturated.

We can hear the creek running now, it sounds like a train, with a deep rumble that is eerie after a couple of fine days. No chance of getting out tonight while it is still so high, based on recent experiences but as long as the rain holds off we should be ok.  Hopefully we will get out tomorrow morning and that the next storm will be a fizzler.

I keep trying to convince everyone that we need another New Years Eve party, and that we should write off the last 19 days as the year 2010 B. That way we can look back on that short 19 day year and say, gee, wasnt that year a stinker?  And start fresh with 2011.

The clean up

This is what we walked into on the day following the flood.  This is our back shed and is is covered in mud. Some of the boxes have fallen apart in the water and what you can see if Michael's comic collection which exploded all over the floor.

This is the other part of the room which had my winter clothes in it and the shaggy rug, luckily all our linen was up high

The mud in the laundry, we have a new washing machine coming hopefully on Wednesday

The pile of stuff we have had to throw out so far.

The clean up has been a pretty feral job.  The mud is slippery and smelly and has gone through all the things that we thought might be ok with a day in the sun. Luckily it was not in our house, I cant imagine the mammoth task that many people in Ipswich and Brisbane are facing this weekend.

Laidley has been told to boil their drinking water because they have ecoli, as with many places in the Lockyer Valley. We heard that 90% of people in Laidley have no flood insurance.  The water went all through the main street, with many businesses devastated. I heard about a lady who ended up with 150 pumpkins in her backyard from upstream.

Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the first time.  All week we have been at working, working and just staying away from our house which was still piled high with stuff from Tuesday's scramble to get everything up high. Most of the suppliers were uncontactable for a couple of days, and then weren't sure when they'd get here as the road from Toowoomba has been shut. We ended up sending a staff member to the Gold Coast to buy bread and milk.

So we were a little worried about what we'd find. We had heard that Rosewood IGA had several deliveries a day (Laidley has not been getting any deliveries apparently as the damage is still too high - the day of the flood passers by could see all the food bobbing around inside the glass doors of the IGA). We found that it was not too hard to find things we needed, they had basics like bread and milk (in limited amounts) and meat was no problem, the fruit and veg was the worst with everything very bruised and in very small quantities, but if you want Duck Fat or a Duckling or some expensive cheese, no problem.

The weather since Tuesday has been excellent, sunny and warm and no rain, though it clouds over every day and we are due for thunder storms mid week. Its strange when a city gets flooded in fine weather like Brisbane did.   They are calling the incident on Monday a cloud burst, a cloud that is so full it just explodes in one hit.  On Tuesday we had three storms that were part of a slow moving rain band, which means that instead of dropping a little rain and moving on as a storm does, you get the whole storm in one place as its moving so slowly, all the rain and all the thunder, for a couple of hours.

Its a very hotly argued topic, as so many people are being denied by their insurance companies.  Michael called on Wednesday and the lady said she could class us as storm damage, but the guy on Thursday said we were flood, so we are not sure what is going to happen with our claim. Technically we were only being flooded during the rain storm, you could see the water drop each time the rain eased. So we have to wait and see.

One thing is sure, because of the extent of the disaster the donations to the Premiers Flood Relief thing have stalled somewhat. Probably because there is now 75% of QLD declared a disaster area, and flooding in 4 states, which means that an awful lot of people have no choice but to hold their money close to rebuild their lives as they aren't covered by insurance.  Its different to the VIC bushfires, which only affected a proportion of the state, and little of the other states at the same time. It will be interesting to see how the government deals with it.

The other interesting thing that has just happened in the past few days is the 'them and us' attitude that has sprung up in some places by locals who have been affected, or know people in the Lockyer or Toowoomba. I am only writing this as an observation of what has been said to me, not as a personal opinion. The coverage in the last few days on radio and TV has largely focussed on Brisbane and Ipswich residents. The radio is jammed with these people ringing up with their story and what they did and didn't save etc. Locals here are complaining about the fact that Brisbane people had 1-2 days notice before the flood, and therefore time to save themselves and possessions, whereas many friends of locals in Lockyer and Toowoomba have died from having no notice, or half an hour max when the emergency automated phone calls came through on Tuesday morning.

Its a very touchy subject and not one that I anticipiated would come out so strongly during the crisis.  Degrees of suffering are still suffering. But things in this part of the valley are sad for the human loss, with friends of friends being found throughout the week. They are sick of hearing about things that are lost.

 

The video of the flood

Inundation - the most terrifying day ever

This morning started like any other this week, flooded in, wet, dark, but with the knowledge of what happened at Toowoomba yesterday.  After some skype calls to mum and friends to reassure them we were oke I went to check out the yard to see the height of today's flood. What followed was the most terrifying day that either Michael or I have ever had. The flood came up within an hour, with the creek bursting its banks, and then the dam overflowing from the wall closest to us (whichy it never does). 

For the first time ever we could see the water on the dam from our house verandah (I mean that water in the normal body of the dam), and then its silver shimmer as it started to spill over the top. The sight of the dam going over on the wrong wall was the scariest thing I have ever seen. It never does that, not in the time the farmer has been here, and it meant that the water in the yard came up in minutes.

In between running around trying to pack (to go where?) and on the phone to the farmer and the neighbour with the cows (who quite handily is in the SES), we watched the water rise steadily and quickly.  By 7:30am it was at the bottom step of our house. It surged through our shed and laundry and into our shed store room. It carried away the empty water tank near the shed and deposited it down the paddock near the gate.

The water surrounded the house so efficiently that there was no place that was not rushing water.  It flowed under the house and you could feel the pillars being battered by the water.

Somehow, our neighbour knew that the water would not get any higher and told us to watch it, and to call her if it did, as she would arrange a helicopter out of here. I dont know how she knew that - this being an unprecedented flood, but she did and we watched that step for 2 more hours.

At 11:00am we went to inspect the damage in our shed. We spent all day yesterday cleaning it out and rearranging boxes, because we were bored and had no idea what was to come today.  If we had known we would have save the comic collection (which are Michael's pride and joy) , my uni books and textbooks, my doll collection, my diaries (written since I was 9), a collection of children's books I'd saved for years, Michael's golf clubs, my winter clothes and the box of clothes for the poor people. As well as all of our luggage and the moving boxes that we've saved from all of our moves.

Some of the fly screens we've put aside for repair are sitting down the the front gate, we can see them lodged there against the fence.

We thought we were ok after that inundation but it turned out it was just the first one. At 1:00pm we got hit with another storm, more severe than the first, which lasted for 3 hours.  It rained solidly the whole time and once again we watched the water come up around the car and the house.

As you can imagine I was beside myself.  We must have spent 8 hours outside today on the verandah watching the water. We had no way to get out except helicopter and knew that there were people in much greater need for that, despite our neighbour's kind offer (she also offered us a food drop, which was nice but we did not take up). There have been 10 people lost in the past two days (confirmed dead), which is horrible to think of so close to home. It is just a ghastly situation.

To eleviate the incredible nervous energy and terror I felt every time I looked at the water, I went inside and started putting things up high. I pulled out drawers and stacked them on beds, all low lying books went on the bed, all my scrapbooking stuff, my wine books, Michael's cook books, my remaining clothes, my jewellry, handbags, shoes, DVD's, technology, plates, good cutlery, special kitchen stuff, very good wine,  even the rug off the floor went up high.

In the middle of it I got a call from the girl who was taking the work phone for the day who asked me prices for a conference enquiry for a lady who obvious lives on Mars (the client refused to understand apparently that the hotel was closed, that all the staff were flooded out and that most of us were preparing for the worst).

We finally felt prepared for whatever might happen, having nowhere to go and nothing else to do but watch the water.  We discussed how we would climb onto the roof (through the manhole and bust out through the tin roof). We came up with the lunatic idea that if by chance the water dropped we would take the car and drive up one of the surrounding hills and camp above the water line, so that at least we were safe. (My dad reminded me that a helicopter would not find us perched on the side of a hill and that all sorts of nasty creatures would want to share our tent).

We were very lucky.  By 4:30pm the rain eased and at 5:00pm the mist that had enshrouded us all day had lifted. We did not have any logs run into the house, though they passed us by. We saw some fish trying to swim back again the flood (no, I dont know what kind of fish they were, unhappy ones probably). By 6:00pm after an early dinner we could breathe for a moment.

 We watched the devasting news on TV about the flooding that is expected tonight in Ipswich and tomorrow in Brisbane and feel so sad for those people who have been told that they WILL be flooded, not IF. The storm surge from Toowoomba, plus today's rain and the need to release water from the Wivenhoe catchment means that tonight Ipswich will get rivers at 22m, with estimated 9000 houses due to go under in Ipswich and Brisbane. All those people, who, like us this morning, had to choose a few things to pack, and leave to be safe. We would have given anything to leave today and be safe. But we are lucky that we did not have the horrible situation of knowing there is no chance of saving the house.

The pictures below show the story of our day and the horror that we felt. Now we are taking it in turns to sleep as we are supposed to get another heavy shower sometime tonight.

About 6:30 / 7:00am

About 7:15am

About 7:30am - when we started to freak out big time

Side of house - this is the driveway, completely blocking any chance to drive out

The other side of the house, before the water reached it max height - see the water tank is still there

The dam starting to overflow on the wrong side

The creek is at the far side of the flooded paddock. We have never seen it from the house before.

Another shot of the dam wall and the water coming towards us

Inundation complete - the water tank has disappeared into the paddock

The water flowing into the shed and storeroom and through our backyard and down the driveway

The side of the house. On the far side of the trees  is the creek, its hard to know where one starts and the other ends. We think the debris is a drum or a log.

The Night of the Dogs or The Mystery of the Sofa

Our new lounge, my sister calls it a 'Top Deck' like the chocolate

The most curious thing happened last night. We are not really even sure that it happened this way, but it is the best explanation we can come up with.
Last night we went to bed fairly late, we were up until about 1:30am reading and watching TV. When we went to bed Michael and I had the usual argument about putting the white kitty outside. She has proven herself utterly untrustworthy when left alone with our new sofa. so I won and she got put outside.

We slept like logs.  We slept straight through until 8:00am, I only woke once when the rained stopped for a few minutes. I heard nothing else all night and I am usually a light sleeper (to the point of painful, Michael would say).

Coming out into the lounge this morning, I noticed a piece of bread on the lounge. Then walking into the kitchen I saw the bin had been knocked over and ransacked.  There was garbage everywhere and the front door was also wide open. White kitty was inside,  calmly sleeping on my study chair. Big kitty was sleeping on the bed in the spare room. The lounge had paw prints (muddy ones) all over it and bits of food from the bin.

I immediately suspected the white kitty, who used to go through the bin all the time when we first got her. She is also addicted to the new lounge .

I looked more closely and found that there was black kitty hairs as well as white ones. There were signs of a scuffle, with prints all over the lounge, as if two animals had been playing chasey there. I was very cranky with both kitties and about to banish them, almost overlooking a very strange piece of evidence.

There were black straight thick short fur / hairs that did not belong to either cat.  The first outragous thought that popped into my head was that the two yappy dogs from next door had chased white kitty home and broken in with her (she is very proficient at this - she jumps up and down until she catches the lever handle with her paws) and trashed the garbage and terrorised the cats. Weird, yes I know. But when we walked to the creek yesterday we noticed that next door's dogs were down at their gate, where they never are, and they were barking like nuts.

Today we saw the owner of the dogs trapped on the other side of the flooded creek.  She must have been caught out when the flood started to come up yesterday, or maybe even earlier, as the creek has been up and down like a yoyo since Wednesday. The poor dogs are very likely to have been home alone without food for a couple of days.

We further confirmed our suspicions when the bag of cat food was found demolished outside the back door. The cats have been very uninterested in their food all week, as it is damp from the weather and this bag was torn to pieces.

The most amazing part is that neither of us heard anything at all. Either we were very tired or the rain was very heavy on the tin roof (likely) and covered up the noise of the fight.  Whatever it was will remain a mystery forever. Remarkably, every mark came off the Top Deck lounge as if it were plastic or tiles, not fabric - thanks Harvey Norman for recommending the stain resistant stuff.

A House with Water Views



Michael in our rock garden watching the water on the driveway


Today, being Sunday, we stayed in bed late as it was our day off.  When we got up when had a lazy breakfast and discussed vague plans to go grocery shopping for a party I'm having next week. However, one little delay led to another and before we knew it I was reading a book and Michael was playing on the computer, with all thoughts of shopping on the backburner.


The overflow is to the top left of the picture

 It was lucky for us that we were so lazy this morning, because it started to rain. It rained in buckets and then in garbage bins, then finally in garbage trucks of water. After a couple of hours I fell asleep and had a little snooze.  When  I woke up, I looked out the window and saw that we had water views like we've never had before.

The dam had burst in banks along a much larger section  of bank and water was spilling out and flowing all across the paddocks in all directions, instead of just down the overflow.  We suspect that when we went away last week it was like this, but had not seen it for ourselves. It explains the fish in the driveway anyway.



The creek, about 1m over the actual causeway and about 3m deep overall



The house was surrounded by water on all sides, running down the driveway (12 inches deep - I know because I went out in gumboots and almost came unstuck). The overflow at the side of the house is running in torrents.

We went for a walk to find the cows that had mysterious disappeared and to see the level of the creek at the crossing.  We found the cows outside the front gate (??) and can only conclude that when the farmer cut the bolt on the secondary gate the

other date that maybe he didn't put the latch on properly and they pushed out when the water started to flow.

We walked down to the creek and found the level about 4 inches below the top of the white posts.  Much higher than the last flood, where it barely lapped at the bottom of the white posts. It also had a crazy current and waves.

Considering ourselves very lucky that we had decided against going shopping, we made sure the cows were safe on higher ground in an adjacent and dryer paddock and came home.



The water flowing towards the driveway





Our house surrounded by water



What lurks in the dam and Aftermath of the flood

When we returned home from holidays on Saturday night, we got quite a shock. We had heard from our cat sitter about the flood waters near our house and in town that were so high that he couldn't even get to our street let alone to our house. Then we heard about the fish that he'd found in our driveway.

But on Saturday night when we got home from the airport in the rain and dark we were blown away by the mess that has befallen our driveway. It looks like one of those promotional bush tracks where eager 4WD'ers try our new cars. Here is Michael trying to get out on Sunday morning.

All around our house is debris from where the dam flowed across the paddock. There is a fair chance it would have made it close to our front stairs, which is pretty high. However, once again, not nearly as bad as many people have it north of here.

We decided to throw a line into our dam to see if we could catch any of the mystery driveway fish. In the past we've had guests who've tried and caught nothing but snags on underwater fences. This time, after our Boxing Day lunch of yabbies, we bought an Opera House Net, which is apparently designed to catch things with claws.

A couple of hours later we went back to inspect our haul and found 3 slimy squirming green eels. I was pretty excited, even though the beasties resembled snakes more than anything else (and I'm not a fan of snakes). However Michael did not have any eel receipes on hand and decided to thrown them back. Personally, I was also not looking forward to having 3 live eels in our bathtub to purge. Apparently, the fact that we only caught eels means that they have probably eaten everything else in the dam that could have been tasty. When we have some more time off we will head up the back to the hidden dam (which is muddier) and try again for some yabbies.

On the cow front, the baby moo terrorists have ram raided the new fence around the house and chewed the end of the phone cable. Michael has spent 6 hours under the house in the past two days trying to get it back together and finally succeeded (Telstra told us their first available technician appointment to get it fixed was on 13th January!). We have had to reinforce the fence with bits of junk from the shed and the neighbours are coming (any day now) to electrify it. We are keen to see these cows move on and are having fun telling them all the ways that you can eat beef.