One dangerous flood averted.

It's been an interesting week, and it's bound to be an interesting couple of weeks with the cleanup. The direct impact of this flood for my family here was 24 hours without power. I made sure we were reasonably prepared with clean water, food, light, and a means to cook. I've also settled one concern about just how safe we actually are from floods in this area. I had insisted on high ground when we were looking for a home but with all of the ups and downs and subtle gradients in the Brisbane area, it's difficult to know exactly which areas are safe for how long during a flood event. Older areas near the city it's a bit easier to get an idea by looking at past flood maps, but newer areas it's a complete guess. Data from the '74 flood for this area doesn't really exist because fewer people lived out this way. This whole area is around 15-20 years old. However, based on observations from the flood's level and walking back to our house, we are between 7 & 8m above that flood level. Judging by how the waters would spread out in this area I'd figure we're secure from a significantly larger flood event.

I spent Friday helping clean up the client's office/factory which ended up being under 1.25m of water. I'm sure they're a bit frustrated because in talking with the owner it sounds like he was told that the factory floor was 20cm higher than the '74 flood level. Since this flood was 1m short of '74, that's an underestimation of 2.5m. Some might argue that flooding can vary, which is true, but based on events and rain, this was a best-case-scenario for a major flood. It was not raining heavily around the creek running behind the factory, so the water was purely coming up from the river. Hopefully they will be back up and running this week or early next week. We're already continuing with the I.T. development since the servers were moved to an alternate data centre before the flooding hit.

It will be interesting to see how people manage with rebuilding from the flood. There has been huge volunteer efforts to help with the cleanup. Unfortunately those efforts may be a bit too eager. People are throwing away pretty much anything the water has touched, and that may prove quite costly if they're assuming their insurance covers it, especially in Brisbane. Most insurance policies cover water damage from storm events, but not gradual flooding. The people up in Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley are likely covered as a result, but Brisbane residents won't be if they don't specifically have flood insurance. So they may be a bit premature binning appliances and furniture, especially plastic, glass, metal, and hardwoods which can easily be cleaned up. Hell, I had to recover a set of hard drives from a computer that spent two days under over a metre of water. Rinse them off, soak in demineralized water to coax out any remaining particles/slime, give them a liberal coat of contact cleaner, and let them dry thoroughly. As long as electronics weren't powered when they came into contact with water, and they're cleaned before they corrode too badly, they can be restored to working order.

I will definitely be making some alterations around the house to better cope with serious events such as the loss of power over a period of time. I will be getting a good battery-powered radio (Our clock radio has a battery backup but it's either just to keep the time, or broken from a few too many pushes off the nightstand) some good long-burning emergency candles, and a 3G wireless Internet dongle. That way we can access the net for information or to let people know we're ok even if the power goes down.