The problem is that Australia doesn’t have a National Guard for such widespread disasters, but we should and we deserve one.
Foreign gazing Canberra distracted and unprepared for Natural Disasters
North Queensland has been hit by a one-in-500-year tropical storm disaster causing widespread flooding. The scale of the rain damage has flooded an area twice the size of Tasmania.
What began as Tropical Cyclone Owen around December 4 in 2018 was initially rated as a Category 1 cyclone out in the Coral Sea. Northern Australia typically gets cyclones and tropical lows this time of year during The Wet – recent devastating Cat 4/5 ones like Cyclone Debbie in 2017, Yasi in 2011, Larry in 2006.
By December 9 Cyclone Owen had crossed the Queensland coast and weakened as it made its way across Cape York and into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Then from December 12 it returned eastward crossing back over Cape York and on December 14 dumped torrential rain causing flooding and landslides particularly around the Daintree River area. The heaviest totals overnight were at Halifax east of Ingham, which recorded 680 millimetres in 24 hours. The tropical lows often associated with cyclones can be as bad or worse than the gale force cyclones themselves. They are widespread and can bring a deluge lasting weeks. Such has been ex-Cyclone Owen.
The rain lasted weeks. By January 26 in 2019, the Daintree River peaked at 12.6m breaking a 118-year flood water record and cutting off some far-north Queensland residents between Cooktown to about Cardwell, north of Cairns.
BOM Has Sacked Aussie Experts for Cheap NFI Third Worlders
The Bureau of Meteorology has been criticised for overstating then understating the rainfall forecasts. The staff must have lost interest when the gale strength reduced to a Category 1 and then to a tropical low. Were they guessing else just staffed by useless ethnics with Third Worlders of 457 visas and bugger-all knowledge or interest in Queenslanders?
So much for its new Cray XC-40 supercomputer. It cost $77 million to build and costs $12 million a year to run. It’s BOM’s eighth supercomputer, yet they can’t even get weather forecasts right or even close.
So Townsville was unprepared for the 2000mm of torrential rain it copped in one week, nearly double Townsville’s annual average of 1143mm. In the first week of February, torrential rain flooded the Alligator Creek and Ross and Bohle Rivers around Townsville and the Herbert River at Halifax. Flash flooding impacted low-lying areas around the Ross River.
The reality of the volumes and scale of the tropical low’s impact across Queensland in just two weeks
The Bureau of Meteorology’s ‘aftermath forecast’ confirmed in an extensive report that the weather event was “rare and exceptional”, with rainfall topping 2,000 millimetres in parts of the Townsville region over the 12-day period, and that many sites across north Queensland set new records for high multi-day rainfall accumulations. “Not only have the accumulated rainfall totals set new records, numerous sites across tropical Queensland set records for the duration of consecutive days of heavy rain.”
The Australian staff at the BOM must have been reinstated?
Privatised and cheapened Ross River Dam’s Sun Water had NFI
On February 4, the Ross River Dam reached 244 percent capacity and so the local council ordered the dam’s floodgates be fully opened, sending 1,900 cubic metres of water gushing into the already inundated town. The dam operator waited until dusk to terrorise Townsville residents of deliberate impending dam flooding at night-time.
Sun Water: “Let’s do a 2011 Wivenhoe, wait till breaking point then unleash on downstream Townsville.”
Labor’s Pluckachook Queensland does not extend beyond Public Servant BrisVegas
One of the worst-hit Townsville suburbs was the community of Oonoonba in the east, nestled in a bend on the Ross River. It was right in the firing line as the dam’s floodgates were opened at the height of the crisis, with the extra water flowing almost directly through the area, before tidal flows pushed it back again, exacerbating the disaster. Many roads were flooded and impassable, the sewerage system started leaking into the floodwaters and many supermarkets had run out of food stocks and essentials.
Some 16,000 homes were without power – so lighting, refrigeration, air-conditioning, etc. At least one thousand homes were severely damaged in the Townsville flood.
Former Ross River Dam engineer Ken Pearce has spoken out, saying that the build up of excess water storage to the dam wall gunwales ought to have been released from the dam earlier in January.
Now the big home insurers are rejecting claims over fine print which differentiates storm water from flood water.
Then the tropical low migrated west. It certainly broke a five-year widespread drought that had stricken much of western Queensland, but the torrential widespread monsoonal deluge was unexpected and came as a shock.
Within a few weeks, water restrictions have been replaced by inland seas stretching from Townsville and Cairns inland to Mount Isa and down to Blackhall, isolating many rural communities at Giru, Halifax, Charters Towers, Richmond, Hughenden and Julia Creek.
Eddington (cattle) Station near outback Julia Creek in north-west Queensland started receiving drought breaking rain from January 31. But good soaking rain soon turned into a torrential downpour of 550mm within 48 hours. Station owner Anthony Andersen reported that the storm brought strong winds and a significant temperature drop. His cattle started to freeze to death and were inundated.
Widespread rotting cattle carcasses pose a serious and urgent biosecurity emergency of botulism, Q fever as the intense tropical heat returns.
Almost all of the 17,000-hectare station was covered in waist-deep mud, meaning cattle which had survived the water were trapped and slowly starving to death. Mr Andersen estimates he’s lost at least half of his 4500-head herd in the rain event, not including the many dozens of calves that were with their mothers, almost all of which would have died. Thousands of properties across northern Queensland have suffered a similar fate.
So far there have been 12,000 insurance claims in Townsville alone, amounting to $147 million. About half a million cattle have been killed worth $500 million. Many crops across north Queensland are devastated.
Then on February 2 a BHP freight train carting zinc and lead from Mount Isa to Townsville was derailed by the flooding just east of Julia Creek at Nelia, causing all sorts of environmental contamination. BHP will no doubt claim ‘Act of God’ excuse.
As Townsville was copping the brunt on the deluge, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pluckachook) FI-FO’d in from her BrisVegas to inspect the devastation first hand (for media PR), speaking with local authorities, Townsville MP Aaron Harper and hearing stories from selected affected residents at an evacuation centre.
“You only know what’s happening when you come see it for yourself and hear people’s stories,” she said. The Premier did not address media but on Twitter she said “nothing replaces seeing – and feeling – what Townsville is going through in the ground, hearing the stories of people going through it”. She launched a Queensland Flood Appeal and her government donated $200,000 to the cause.
Political platitudes don’t cut it. It’s a regurgitation of Labor Anna Bligh’s: ‘We are Queenslanders‘ spiel.
Aren’t we all Australians?
The Queensland Government declared Townsville a disaster situation from January 30 to February 9. Premier Palaszczuk has requested Category 3 assistance from the federal government, which has been confirmed. Then she scurried back south to BrisVegas by charter flight to her comfy high-rise digs in her plush Tower of Power in downtown Williams Street – probably to dine and gossip with her CFMMMEU comrades.
The rest of northern Queensland won’t be seen her again until election time in 2020.
The Queensland Fire and Emergency Service, volunteer State Emergency Service, Queensland Police Services have all been overstretched in responding to the widespread disaster. But it happened previously in 1998 and in 1953. These services are not able to cope with the scale and complexity of the disaster, but as public servants they’re gagged from whistleblowing.
Karma for Aboriginal Looters
As if the devastatioin is not bad enough. Then unbelievably in comes reports of looters. Like they should be shot on sight.
This is what zionist Facebook is used for – delinquents have been found out advertising their plans on Facebook to loot flood homes and businesses forced to be abandoned by owners as the flood water levels rose.
These two low-lives robbed a Dan Murphy’s liquor outlet on Ross River Road in Townsvilles’ Aitkenvale. Criminal Aborigines Hughie Morton (21) and Troy Mathieson (23) from the notorious Palm Island reservation 50km north. Patrolling police happened upon the two looting the popular bottle shop about 3am on Sunday February 3, when the floodwaters were at their worst.
Seems they succumbed down the drain, with one local commentator remarking: “Well the two looters in Townsville got their just desserts. Karma is a wonderful thing.” Another responded: ‘Two bright young looters who had a whole life of crime ahead of them.”
Good riddance
Scomo Exploits Disaster for PR
But these the North Queensland Floods are clearly a national disaster and warrant and national emergency response.
The Morrison government has announced $75,000 in grants to help graziers but that is not enough to restore rural properties to being viable and self-sufficient.
Farmers across the state’s north-west in Cloncurry, Hughenden and Julia Creek are all in the same position. Most are in major debt to the banks and were hoping a good year would put them ahead. But now they are faced with the unenviable position of having to borrow more money to re-stock if they want to stay in the industry. Other graziers who have leased property to gain a start in the industry are also struggling with debt, with last cent invested in building up their stock. Industry bodies say it will be at least $500 million in stock losses alone in north-west Queensland.
Devastated Australians don’t want to see the Prime Minister of our nation electioneering through an Australian disaster zone.
“Those poor people in Townsville and there’s their PM riding in a ARMY APC with army greens on with a big grin for a photo opportunity. SICKENING!!!”
National Guard Argument
The disaster demands urgent co-ordinated response be a competent experienced national force. Search and rescue and emergency medical and counselling aid to isolated communities needs to be identified, prioritized, and provided. Food, water, clothing and housing need to be restored and distributed. The half million dead cattle and sheep carcasses need to be properly retrieved and disposed of before diseases like botulism and Q fever spreads. Surviving livestock need to be retrieved and fed.
Natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements need to kick in immediately over a wide region of the state. Public infrastructure – power, drinking water, sewage, sanitation, road access, fuel supplies, utilities and thousands of kilometres of fencing all need to be restored. Rural lobby group AgForce estimates the final damage bill from fencing, dams, vehicles and public infrastructure such as railways, roads and bridges could be higher than $1 billion.
Disease control from soil-borne bacteria stirred up by heavily contaminated floodwaters needs to be addressed. Livestock needs to be re-instated if graziers are to survive this.
The financial hit to farmers in the state’s northwest and the industry more broadly may not be known for weeks but it’s expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Immediate financial assistance is called for and bank debt repayments needs to have moratoria imposed to prevent banks indiscriminately foreclosing on vulnerable borrowers flood affected.
Just as insurers in 2011 declared the Brisbane flood to be excluded claim compensation as a “dam release flood”, Anna Bligh as Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Banking Association is in there to exclude banking-insurance claim compensation as another Labor “dam release flood”.
Did Bligh pressure Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill to behold bring a flood of waters to destroy..? Bligh’s bonuses on this one must be massive.
“We are Banks for our shareholders.”
The Queensland State government is not up to the task of natural disaster management on the scale currently impacting northern Queensland.
It is not prepared, nor resourced nor competent in disaster preparedness, response, relief or recovery. The Queensland Police Service is not trained for this, nor are the volunteer SES on this scale, nor indeed is the Australian Army. The closest the Australian Army gets is peace keeping in cooperation with the Royal Australian Navy and Airforce transports. But clearly natural disaster management is outside the remit of Australia’s existing capabilities.
The Prime Minister’s despatched Army Brigadier Stephen Jobson (Commander of 16 Aviation Brigade) probably can fly Blackhawks has no experience in natural disaster civil emergency management. He’ll be making things it up as he goes, then after it’s over, his experience and knowledge reassigned.
How is he planning to deal with the looming disease epidemic from the 500,000 odd animal carcasses and the sewage in the floodwarers? Are we son to learn of outbreaks of botulism and Q fever. Are we to learn of hospitals reporting cases of Dengue Fever, Ross River Fever, Barmah Forest Virus, Cholera, Typhoid, Dysentery?
In First World Australia, Ordinary Australians and those in our region deserve a First World standard of disaster management.
Widespread drought, floods, an epidemic outbreak, a biosecurity emergency, cyclone devastation, earthquake and tsunami, massive derailment, airline crash, industrial disaster, catastrophic bushfire, widespread livestock carcass disposal, and civil emergencies.
As if Cyclone Tracey that wiped out Darwin in 1974 wasn’t a wake up call? Yet what has Australia since done nationally to be prepared for another? It should be for the media and individual farmers and grazers to plea for assistance in our own country.
Australia requires a national disaster relief fund in the billions to be on standby to fund disaster response, relief and recovery.
Australia requires a fully trained and prepared Australian National Guard to deliver these necessary services.
“Canberra every year steals billions out of our taxpayer funds for screaming foreigner handouts.
Yet when us taxpayers are in real need, Canberra just ignores us. Lib/Lab/Nats/Greens/crossbench stooges – it matters not who’s in power.”