Australian Flood Crisis - cities under water, sharks in the streets

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weekend_warrior said:
G-A-F?

edit: eh, fuck. How About No beat me.
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Okay, I've seen that used so many times before, but never really wondered what it stood for, until now.

So, what the hell does "G-A-F" mean?

On topic: I think it would be cool to see a picture of the floods from orbit.
 
jamesinclair said:
You know the "meanwhile in finland" picture?

Well, here the new "meanwhile in australia"

a22_26271921.jpg
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Is it just me or is this the absolute saddest part of the floods?
 
-Yeti said:
Okay, I've seen that used so many times before, but never really wondered what it stood for, until now.

So, what the hell does "G-A-F" mean?

On topic: I think it would be cool to see a picture of the floods from orbit.
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Germany, Australia, Florida. It asks you to pick where you think the topic title comes from.
 
Oh look a disaster that doesn't affect America! let's all laugh. If we did this about 9/11 or hurricane katrina we'd get banned. 9/11 sucked because cheez tv wasn't on.

hilarious.

This sucks, I'm just glad I don't have any family up that way and I hope the gaffers that do have checked to make sure they're ok. and the gaffers them selves are ok.
 
HolyCheck said:
Oh look a disaster that doesn't affect America! let's all laugh. If we did this about 9/11 or hurricane katrina we'd get banned. 9/11 sucked because cheez tv wasn't on.

hilarious.

This sucks, I'm just glad I don't have any family up that way and I hope the gaffers that do have checked to make sure they're ok. and the gaffers them selves are ok.
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Except for xbhaskarx, I think the posters making jokes are Aussies.

TL4E said:
Sorry, but these floods barely measure up to 9/11 in terms of fatalities and long term consequences.
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Well, I guess there is some stupid in the thread.
 
HolyCheck said:
Oh look a disaster that doesn't affect America! let's all laugh. If we did this about 9/11 or hurricane katrina we'd get banned. 9/11 sucked because cheez tv wasn't on.

hilarious.

This sucks, I'm just glad I don't have any family up that way and I hope the gaffers that do have checked to make sure they're ok. and the gaffers them selves are ok.
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Sorry, but these floods barely measure up to 9/11 in terms of fatalities and long term consequences.
 
Dead Man said:
Except for xbhaskarx, I think the posters making jokes are Aussies.


Well, I guess there is some stupid in the thread.
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Yeah, it just bothers me we couldn't jump into an American natural disaster thread and do the same thing without being banned
 
xbhaskarx said:
If giant rodents in boats is the worst part things can't be too bad.
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Worst post in this thread.

Oh look a disaster that doesn't affect America! let's all laugh. If we did this about 9/11 or hurricane katrina we'd get banned. 9/11 sucked because cheez tv wasn't on.

hilarious.
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Yeah, it just bothers me we couldn't jump into an American natural disaster thread and do the same thing without being banned
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Best post in this thread.

Don't worry, I'm sure as soon as xbhaskarx finishes paying of his 300 dollar flu-tablet bill, he can start saving towards an ignorance-quashing mission to Australia. Might take a while though, the Aussie dollar is still stronger than the greenback. :lol
 
There's no greater tragedy than the death of an American. Dead Aussies are just funny, c'mon guys.
 
TL4E said:
Sorry, but these floods barely measure up to 9/11 in terms of fatalities and long term consequences.
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It was more an example of the situation with these threads, and it's quite true. This isn't anywhere near the fatalities of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, but the displacements and the overall effect of food crops is going to be hugely felt for the rest of the country in the next year or two. Where it is flooding is where a lot of perfect farmland is; wipe open spaces and the start of healthy river systems that travel 2,000km south-west throughout Australia. Just think of France and Germany's internal food source being wiped out, and then you can pretty much imagine the scale of the rain we're talking about.

The worst thing about it? Only 2 cyclones of a predicted 6 have hit the state of QLD this summer. Back in September there were warnings that the state was going to have to prepare for highly unseasonal rains, even for the scale of summer. These places have got a lot more shit coming their way and it isn't over till the fat lady sings - which will probably be April or May.


I'm not one to blindly defend my country or my countrymen, but the least people could do is have some sense of respect for others who will feel the ramifications of this for a long time. BBC calls it biblical floods for a reason, and they're not one to sensationalise headlines for hits.
 
Floods have decimated the town of my birth - Rockhampton, and alot of the bush country where my work is based is under meters of water.

Countless people left homeless, with many other repurcussions such as the spread of mosquitoes and the floodwaters pushing venomous snakes into populated areas.

Landowners forced to kill livestock is probably one of the tougher stories to swallow.

Here's some photos a colleague sent through from Toowoomba, which only got hit hard today. For our North American friends, Toowoomba has roughly the same population as Cedar Rapids in Iowa.

24o9a4g.jpg


bhg7r6.jpg


2rfzcp1.jpg
 
It's one thing to see a flood on the news, its another thing when it's a place you've been many times and are familiar with.

I'm a little further north in the Whitsundays, and we dodged the worst of the floods due to the fact Peter Faust Dam wasn't at capacity. Now that it is, I'm very concerned the same is going to happen to us given a decent downpour. Then again, we survived Tropical Cyclone Ului last year, we're prepared for the worst.

My condolences go to our southern brothers and sisters who are currently being affected.
 
Fuck that, my brother and his family are in Tawoomba, and my dad is stranded in Brisbane because he cant get to them (for a holiday visit).
 
A mate of mine visited his mum over in Tassie for Christmas, and on the way back to Rockhampton he found himself stranded in Brisbane as the Rocky airport was closed due to the floods. He'd left his car there as he was only intending to be gone a week, but due to the possibility of it being swept away he had it towed back to his place. :lol According to his facebook wall he got home earlier today.

Meanwhile, the heat here in WA is shit.
 
I'm from America. You're going to have to redefine how you're measuring these floods because I don't have a clue how big either of those countries are.
 
For those non-Queenslanders/non-Australians having a hard time visualising the scale of the floods, this interactive map infographic does a good job of showing the range of areas hit and their impact.

Compared to other continents, Australia is topographically flat. What Europeans and North Americans would call a hill, we'd happily call a mountain. It doesn't take much of a rain for fluvial systems to burst their banks, and when they break, the extent of the flood is usually widespread as there are relatively few topographical lows for the water to collect in. So in central Queensland, or anywhere west of the Great Dividing Range, they experience floods that take out thousands of acres of land.

Have a look at a map like this, and you'll see the extent of towns hit by flooding - areas that are predominantly land for pasture or agriculture. That's a lot of livelihoods directly affected, as well as the flow-on effect for those in metro areas who need their product. Food prices are set to double and everyone will be affected by this.
 
Really sucks, because it's fucked up my business. Prices of Grains and Pulses have taken a hike to not being available at all. Gonna be a bitch explaining to customers why prices have gone up :lol
 
Angry Grimace said:
I'm from America. You're going to have to redefine how you're measuring these floods because I don't have a clue how big either of those countries are.
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Really?

The entirety of Montana and two Colorados.
 
Angry Grimace said:
I'm from America. You're going to have to redefine how you're measuring these floods because I don't have a clue how big either of those countries are.
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Queensland is more than twice the size as Texas, and roughly a third of the state has been directly affected.
 
There's a river that flows through one of the parks near my house, and I always had suspicions that there was an underwater basin underneath my suburb due to water "leaking" out of a traffic island in my street a day or two after it rains heavily. A week ago I see this brown water gushing down the drains further up the hill, so I drive up there and there's a lightpole that has been split at the base and water frothing out of it like a waterfall. It took SEQ officers 3 hours to plug it back up. Absolutely nuts.
 
Bernbaum said:
Queensland is more than twice the size as Texas, and roughly a third of the state has been directly affected.
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According to wikipedia, Texas is 696k square kms, and Queensland and is 1,852,642 square km

And you say 1/3 of Queensland has been effected.

So, more or less, the entirety of Texas. Maybe I should have put that in the title.
 
NekoFever said:
As if it wasn't bad enough...
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Imagine a big salt water crocodile swimming idly past your house - fuck that.

They said this season was going to be a season full of high-rain events due to La Niña and they were right. I remember when the banana growing region was affected a few years ago - bananas went from $1.30 to $12 a kilo. This is going to be worse for many more crops.

GillianSeed79 said:
Mother nature finally figured out how to win Risk apparently. I always feel bad for Australia. It seems like you guys get screwed for all the stuff other countries do to the environment.
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Australia has the second highest rate of emissions per head of population - don't feel too bad.

HolyCheck said:
Oh look a disaster that doesn't affect America! let's all laugh. If we did this about 9/11 or hurricane katrina we'd get banned. 9/11 sucked because cheez tv wasn't on.

hilarious.
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Lighten up princess - most of the jokes aren't malicious at all.
 
This summer I will be going to Queensland. We booked a trip in july (so winter in Australia and the dry season in Queensland -or so I hope-) We will drive from Brisbane to Cairns in a campervan. I'm afraid the area will not have recovered fully by then and I will feel like a disaster tourist :(

I hope QLD recovers. In 2009 I've been to Australia (did a small tour of the country visiting various parts of it except WA -sorry guys-) and I fell in love with it. Such nice people everywhere, beautiful landscapes and very good food.
 
The Storyteller said:
It's like he's making fun of himself. :lol
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Yeah, he's making a self-deprecating satirical joke about the average American's perceived lack of geographical awareness.
 
Gelry said:
This summer I will be going to Queensland. We booked a trip in july (so winter in Australia and the dry season in Queensland -or so I hope-) We will drive from Brisbane to Cairns in a campervan. I'm afraid the area will not have recovered fully by then and I will feel like a disaster tourist :(
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It'll be fine. We were hit by Tropical Cyclone Ului last year and within maybe 3 or 4 weeks everything was back to normal. It'll take a bit longer for the more severely flood damaged areas but July is usually pretty dry it'll be a painful distant memory by then.
 
dejay said:
Australia has the second highest rate of emissions per head of population - don't feel too bad.
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... which is not an entirely fair statistic considering our nation is the same size as the (contiguous) United States, yet has 7% of the population. ;-)
 
BowieZ said:
... which is not an entirely fair statistic considering our nation is the same size as the (contiguous) United States, yet has 7% of the population. ;-)
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You're right, there are many mitigating factors in terms of our emissions. A major one is that we do a lot of primary industry, which requires a lot of energy. Other countries buy this stuff from us - we burn the fuel and they get to refine the product using less energy. We also have less densely populated cities which means public transport is patchy and expensive - thus making cars a good solution to a lot of people.

But still, we still produce a lot of carbon per person - we also produce much of the world's uranium but only have the one nuclear reactor, and it's not for producing electricity. We can do more and we should do more, but we'll leave that for the next government that's elected because it's all a bit too tricky at the moment.
 
dejay said:
But still, we still produce a lot of carbon per person - we also produce much of the world's uranium but only have the one nuclear reactor, and it's not for producing electricity. We can do more and we should do more, but we'll leave that for the next government that's elected because it's all a bit too tricky at the moment.
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I hate that the Labor party campaigned against nuclear power for so long that they've convinced the general public it's dangerous. It's the one single policy they had that I could never support. We should have been building nuclear power plants years ago and slowly decomissioning the coal and gas plants. I don't know how public opinion on nuclear power can be turned around in the short term, but I hope its possible.
 
saunderez said:
I hate that the Labor party campaigned against nuclear power for so long that they've convinced the general public it's dangerous. It's the one single policy they had that I could never support. We should have been building nuclear power plants years ago and slowly decomissioning the coal and gas plants. I don't know how public opinion on nuclear power can be turned around in the short term, but I hope its possible.
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Just don't put one in Scone- you drive buy them and they are protesting the coal powerplans, the wind powerplans, every time bitching about something like "omfg the noice" or something.
 
saunderez said:
I hate that the Labor party campaigned against nuclear power for so long that they've convinced the general public it's dangerous. It's the one single policy they had that I could never support. We should have been building nuclear power plants years ago and slowly decomissioning the coal and gas plants. I don't know how public opinion on nuclear power can be turned around in the short term, but I hope its possible.
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Actually 30 years ago I'd agree with them, but nuclear power has come a long way since then and it's pretty amazing now.
 
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