I've been reading/watchin all the rains and flooding ya'll are havin swung at you down there on the other end of the planet but haddn heard a peep outta ya'll about it. Reading again just this mornin about a cyclone havin hit and another one about to make landfall that could dump another meter of fresh rain ... jeez, you guys/gals are really gettin hammered!

I'm concerned and curious, how ya'll makin out down there?

The one coming in now (making landfall in an hour or two) is a category 5, 3x the size of Katrina (an eye over 100km/60 miles wide).

The storm system is almost as big as the 48 states of the US.

Most of it is up north. There was flooding in Victoria (our state) in the country areas, a lot of it severe, but Melbourne has been cruisy. Queensland is really copping it though. We all will by taxes (0.5-1% levy being applied to everybody to pay for the damage).

Ah well. Life eh?

Kim, there's a lot of empty space here so with enough warning populations can get up and move. It's all aDCbeast's fault this global warming.

I hear ya about all the room down there 'berto but what I keep seeing gettin up and movin are buildings, cars, etc.

Here in the US we've been inundated with some seriously COLD weather this year. Hell even here in Texas this is the 1st day I've seen above freezin outta the last 6, which is very unusual.

'Course Al Gore was quick to quip the other day how all this cold weather was easily explainable with global warming ... er .... climate change

He and beastie would likely be fast friends

Don't get me wrong, hundreds of towns have flooded in Victoria and Queensland, even the capital city Bris-Vegas was almost washed away. It has been an incredibly trying time for those people. Thanks for caring Kim, hope the chilli keeps you Texans warm this winter

What has impressed me most in what I've seen reported about all the flooding and damage is you cats have managed to avoid calamitous injuries/deaths through it all. Aussies seem to be a tough minded, persevering bunch, traits I greatly admire in a culture

Oddly, when Katrina kit New Orleans so many were injured and died simply because they were too damned stupid to get out of the way of a storm they had a weeks heads up about prior to landfall! Then the US govt. was quick to rush in and start handin out medical aid, food, clothing, shelter and $$$$ to the damned fools who stayed

By comparison, a similar hurricane hit the Texas coast the next year with only a few casualties and the fed govt. didn't rush to our aid, nor was it much asked for by folks here. Amazing the social make-up and differences a cuppla hundred miles can make in how such things are dealt with

If you've never seen a disaster first hand you often won't believe it until it's too late. Stupidity has no borders. In some parts of every country there are areas where the folks have seen it all before and they are hard to kill. Texans & Queenslanders are probably quite similar, except for the gun lust. In QLD your grandfathers 303 is enough for most jobs, no assault rifles up there. But mother nature is just accepted as the boss, nobody messes with her.

i saw it first hand, and posted pics

We had a catastrophic hurricane here 11 months before Katrina and most people were too dense to leave. Luckily the storm was fast moving so there was no storm surge to speak of or a lot of people would have died. As it was, the wind damage was horrendous and it's a miracle that there were only a handful of deaths. It didn't help either that everyone was fixated on the center of the projected storm track and thought it was going to hit Tampa, 100 miles north of here, despite repeated warnings that those tracks aren't 100% accurate. That said, we had a lot of help from all over get here right away and it irks me the way the folks New Orleans complained that no one was even trying to help them when I know good and well that help was certainly trying to get there but faced with an almost insurmountable barrier of water and destruction.

It's sad to see this going on in Queensland, and now there are fires out west, but the Aussies seem to be capable and resiliant. I salute them.

new orleans is a joke, below sea level with 100 yr old shit levees, and people are surprised when it fails/floods. jeeeesus people!

Australia is pretty wacky at the moment.. In the past 1-2 weeks we've had floods, bushfires, a heatwave and record summer cold snaps bringing snow to some parts of the country while it's 40+ (Celsius) in others.

A lot of areas of Melbourne flooded on Friday night, whipped by the tail of the cyclone that hit Queensland last week. Our apartment was one of them. Fortunately this time for us it wasn't bad, 2 bedrooms affected. The unfortunate part is we were due to list it for sale starting this weekend and we've been pushed back a couple of weeks now.

Then again, you walk around the area and you see the amount of couches and matresses etc out on the street water damaged waiting for the council to pick them up and you realise you got off really lightly. The area I live has canals and is right by the beach so water is far from uncommon but it's never flooded like this before.

If I recall only 1 person died in the cyclone, which is a miracle; and he only died by being overcome by fumes from a generator. There's already 60+ homes destroyed in the bushfires out west (though a long way from the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria 2 years ago yesterday).. but yeah. Crazy.

Sorry to hear of your troubles and all the pending inconvenience it will likely lead to pulse. As you mentioned, comparatively you seem to have gotten off lightly overall, which is a good thing.

With the news coverage I've seen of the flooding/ fires, etc. I'm sure overall these disasters are gonna wreak some havoc with the insurance companies and overall economy.

Is the tax they're proposing to be an ongoing disaster funding deal, or have some finite term? Our Texas legislature proposed a "temporary tax" some years ago to cover a budget shortfall and surprise, surprise, the extensions have been endless since its initial expiration and .... it's even gone up

Luckily for us here in Dallas the only natural disasters we're likely to encounter are tornadoes. While these can be horrendous and if a facility is directly hit by one it's pretty much destroyed, with a high likelihood anyone there could well be hurt, if not killed, they're very localized in their damage. Luckily this also means the likelihood of being effected by one is minimal overall.

When I was very young we had a lot of flooding here at times but with the erection of levies and other flood control measures they've enacted that's rarely an issue anymore and again, highly localized when it occurs.

All my best to you cats down under and hopefully ya'll have seen the worst of it, at least for this year!

Hey 'berto .... gun lust, in Texas

As is pretty typical, reality is far from what's portrayed in the press. Don't get me wrong, as a culture, yeah there's a lot of gun owners here, but the idea there's also a high concentration of assault rifles is far from true.

Thankfully, I've never had a gun pulled on me, nor have I ever had to pull mine on anyone either and hope that same luck continues

i plead the 5th on that last comment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2011 05:42PM by fossil_digger.

Let's not hijack this thread with the gun debate.
Floods and drought are often referred to withe the expression "... In living memory" and this is my point. If you or your family have experienced a disaster you have respect for mother nature. Australians have show that they remember and it has saved lives.

Hijack it, hell man, you started the discussion of guns in the 1st place

I guess woberto hasn't yet learned not to mention "gun lust" when talking about Texans specifically and Americans in general without expecting to push a button.

more like everyone else has gun envy.

I'm happy without any. I don't think I could've avoided killing half my neighbours otherwise

If you have 30" of strong twine, a steak knife or a car in your possession you could have achieved the same level of mayhem with your neighbors pulse. The reason you haven't is simply because you're a reasonable human being

Nah, we have an underground carpark, it's too hard to get the car up the stairs...

reminds me of a college story where we took a guys VW apart and reassembled it in his dorm room.

You guys (and girl) should visit Australia sometime. Or New Zealand if you want to see some hobbits

I'd love to visit but can't even afford to leave town right now.

Lost all your money in that reindeer jerky scheme huh?
The majority of people are feeling the pinch these last few years.
It's all Bush's fault.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2011 01:01AM by woberto.

nah, it's Mubarak's fault

wait, now it's Sulieman's fault

DK's fault, really.

plus613/porn613 is single-handedly keeping the US data centre business afloat. We're bigger than the Amazon EC2 cloud service and google combined. If they ran a very small image site.

Would be great if I could get some NBN action. I'd like to .. de-offshore hosting of the sites to the basement. That'd be elite.

Back on topic, I hope our kiwi friends 'across the pond' are all doing well. Loads of earthquakes lately, I don't remember it ever happening when I was growing up?

Yeah, hopefully GAK's not in Christchurch