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.