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Interesting there is no "outrage" yet in the media regarding this disaster. I was raised in New Orleans, LA, so I see these types of things differently. And o

Interesting there is no "outrage" yet in the media regarding this disaster. I was raised in New Orleans, LA, so I see these types of things differently. And on the surface, Brisbane looks eerily similar to NOLA. Is this an event that could have been prevented or is this a 1000 year flood?

jerf 16y ago
Who would be the target of this outrage? I know nothing about Aussie politics, honest question.
- fungi 16y ago
  depends shock jocks will blame the greens "for not letting us build more dams" or some other rubbish. greens (like me) will blame poor planning for building cities and major infrastructure on known flood plains.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Effects can have more than one cause, my friend.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Brisbane has been in its present location since 1825. If the "green" answer to "how can we stop floods in Brisbane" is "well you shouldn't have built a city there in the first place, so nyer" then I don't think that's the kind of attitude that's going to do wonders for the cause of environmentalism. Seriously though, to the extent that there's fingers to be pointed they should be pointed at the folks in charge of the Wivenhoe Dam. But hey, I'm not a dam engineer, so maybe we really do need a second dam.
    - fungi 16y ago
      tokyo has a big ass green belt around it's river http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.738057,139.824747&spn=0.004441,0.009903&t=h&z=17 http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.738057,139.824747&... edit: for a positive comparison checkout south bank http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.478211,153.023704&z=18&t=k&nmd=20110113 http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.478211,153.023704&z=18&#3... edit2: another example of green belts along rivers is Curitiba in southern Brasil see: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-25.45894,-49.191552&spn=0.00494,0.009903&t=h&z=17 http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-25.45894,-49.191552&... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Hydrography_and_Pluviometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Hydrography_and_Pluvio...
      - blasdel 16y ago
        There's also epic flood control stuff on the river north of Tokyo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underground_Discharge_Channel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Undergr...
        fungi 16y ago
        i'm constantly floored by the scale and quality of infrastructure in japan, and not just tokyo even out woop woop they have rail, road, water and telco infrastructure that makes our efforts look feeble. amazing shit you can do when you run public debt at close to 100% of GDP :)
        wakeless 16y ago
        And when you have population density. It makes economic sense to provide better services when you have x number of people per m^2 as compared to the Australian density. I'm a big believer that Australian cities should be bearing this in mind and building up rather than out.
        jacques_chester 16y ago
        Japanese public debt is actually at ~200% of GDP. Australia is not seen as a particularly safe bond issuer, we could not sustain that level of debt.
  - Dylanlacey 16y ago
    Except for Bob Brown. Who is now widely perceived as being a heartless loony. (For O/S readers, the leader of the Greens party claimed that "The Coal Industry should have to pay for the cleanup as it was caused by climate change, which is their fault" (Paraphrased). This is not only unproven, it's also a cop-out... PEOPLE used that coal Bob, they're to blame as well if we believe your causality logic. It's a good thing there were no floods before this year, and certainly none in the 19th century to disprove your theory that natural disasters only happen to naughty planets whose inhabitants mine coal)
    - fungi 16y ago
      privatise the profit, socialise the costs.
      - brc 16y ago
        Serious question now : do you really believe/agree with what Bob Brown is saying? Or are you going along with the support just because you support his political party? He has no facts or even scientific support for his statement. To state that the Australian coal industry has somehow caused major flooding is to indulge in bald-faced lying of the type that only agenda-driven politicians can manage. The one data point of worse flooding in 1893 before the coal industry even existed is case closed for most rational people. Not even the most activist climate scientist is prepared to definitively link the floods to warming temperature, let along the percentage of warming attributed to co2 emissions, let alone the 1% of global co2 emissions that Australia accounts for. About the best you'll get is 'global warming may have contributed to the flooding'. And that's hardly a smoking gun of the type Brown is fantasizing about. If I was a supporter of Bob Brown I would be embarassed by this particular outburst.
        jacques_chester 16y ago
        I wouldn't be. Bob Brown has form on this sort of thing. He blamed the ACT and Victoria bushfires on global warming also. Basically his major supporters at this point must be the forgetful and the shameless.
  - brc 16y ago
    Not just shock jocks. Normal people as well. Your policy response, which can be paraphrased as 'don't build dams, move major cities' is idealogically warped and just wishful thinking. You would find it hard outside of your peer group to find anyone to take you seriously. The cities are where they are. It's not a surprise that Brisbane and Ipswich floods - the very first parts of written QLD history contain stories of immense flooding events. More flood mitigation via Dams is the only sensible and possible response. More dams also has the side effect of more water supplies and possibly more hydro-electric power.
    - panacea 16y ago
      "Your policy response, which can be paraphrased as 'don't build dams, move major cities' is idealogically warped and just wishful thinking." I could be wrong, but I think he's suggesting not building on the areas of the city which form the flood plain, not the whole city. We have an accurate record of which areas of the City were flooded in 1974. The areas that flooded recently are a subset of those areas. People were allowed to build in these areas because the Dam was supposed to have mitigated the risk. We could have kept zoning plans in place to deter building in these areas and still had a vibrant city built up around them. More river-front parkland to boot!
      - brc 16y ago
        It doesn't matter if it is 5% of a city or the whole city, it's not going to happen. The areas that were flooded now were mostly populated in 1974. There's a popular meme going around that huge areas of previously-vacant land was built upon. While that might be true in some instances of outer suburbs, in general the flooded suburbs of Brisbane were the same ones as all the previous floods. As I've already stated, if you want to clear the city from the low-lying areas, you'll have to forcibly acquire a large amount of private property, which is either an expensive (if the law is followed) route, or a suspension of the current law. So suggesting the low lying areas be forcibly cleared is clearly unworkable. And it involves acquiring and demolishing the majority of the CBD. If you think that is even remotely possible then I've got the Story Bridge to sell you. Everyone who purchases property in Brisbane is well aware of the 1974 floods. I know, because I purchased a property knowing full well it could be flooded one day as it was in 1974. And last week it was. But I'm not about to sell it or have the government confiscate it because it gets flooded once every 40 years. About the best thing that could happen is something along the lines of a) new developments must have critical infrastructure (electrical circuits etc) about the 100-year flood leve b) flood prone suburbs could have prominent markers, such as bands around power poles to remind people of previous flood heights. There's a popular one in the Breakfast Creek Hotel. c) new housing in flood zones could have a mandate not to use water soluble materials such as plasterboard in lower levels, and could be mandated to have the main living area above flood height. People with older houses often came out with no problems because the old houses were built with floods in mind. This idea of avoiding flood risk by avoiding waterfront areas is silly. By the same token, all residents should abandon Cairns and Townsville because of the cyclone risk. And cyclones in the north happen far more frequently, and with more devastation than Brisbane floods.
- prawn 16y ago
  The Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, is widely considered to have actually done quite well out of the election - has been seen to have reacted quickly, done her part, said the right things, etc. There are a few scammers rightfully copping it, but it's been a pretty galvanising event in Australia.
  - Dylanlacey 16y ago
    I think the fact that she was genuinely emotionally upset helped.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  A Royal Commission has been launched to investigate. In Australian law these are the most powerful forms of inquiry. An RC is completely independent of the government, cannot be influenced by Ministers or Parliament, has very broad powers to find evidence and even to compel witnesses, can decide independently what to investigate subject to its terms of reference and can draw any conclusions it wishes. Generally they are led by respected judges with technical experts in support. So sweeping are their powers that they are only ever appointed in the most extreme situations, such as massive natural disasters (Victoria bushfires, now Queensland floods) or revelations of severe maladministration (corruption in Queensland and NSW police forces). The Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria did point to individual as well as systemic failures. Some of these individuals were seen as being close enough to the government that the Royal Commission's findings contributed to the downfall of the government at a subsequent election.
- stoney 16y ago
  Well the political hierarchy is something like: - Campbell Newman, Lord Mayor of Brisbane - Anna Bligh, Premier of Queensland - Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia I think it's pretty unlikely that you could pin the blame on any of them and they all responded well once the crisis happened. The operating rules for the Wivenhoe dam (which is supposed to mitigate this kind of thing) decide how much water can be released and when, and that is set at the state level (i.e. by Queensland state government), so probably Anna Bligh is the easiest target in that respect. I saw an official describe the dam operating rules as "conservative", but I'm not sure in which direction they are conservative - in the direction of minimising releases or minimising risk of overflow.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  Bush of course, duh. It's a well-known fact that he did Brisbane because he hates Aussies.
chrisaycock 16y ago
Australia was suffering severe drought for many years until 2010. There was always fear of brush fire getting out of control (similar to California's wild fires) and there were water restrictions in many cities. After persistent conditions like that, flooding was unthinkable.
- neckbeard 16y ago
  Not really - El Nino cycles followed by La Nina mean that drought followed by flood is a common theme along the East coast of Australia. One of the more patriotic pieces of poetry in Australia (My Country, Dorothea Mackellar) even refers the "droughts and flooding rains". Australians also always have bushfire risk - it is just part and parcel of the native vegetation, and fire mitigation techniques only go so far (see the bad Canberra fires of 2003 or the disastrous Victorian fires in 2009).
hugh3 16y ago
Differences between this and Katrina: 1. The Australian media doesn't run on a 24-hour "outrage" cycle. We don't have any way to blame this on some targeted political figure (though certainly political figures have come in for some criticism). People will get blamed (particularly those who were in charge of the dam that was supposed to prevent this from happening again) but it'll happen slowly and in a controlled manner, not in a rapid flurry of 24-hour-news-station activity. We have a procedure for finger-pointing, and it's called a Royal Commission... we'll spend a year investigating and holding hearings and then eventually find the correct people at whom to tut-tut. 2. The death toll is relatively low. Very low in Brisbane itself (where the rise of the floodwaters was gentle) and a mere dozen or so in other parts of the state (where flash floods did occur). Sad and all that, but still on a relatively small scale. 3. No breakdown of order. Partly because a river flood is nothing like a hurricane (the city itself wasn't cut off, and if you're in an affected area you can walk five blocks to an unaffected area) and partly because of the different quality of people in the two cities. 4. New Orleans already had serious problems (poverty, race relations) which were only exacerbated. Brisbane was a pretty nice place, and it's still a pretty nice place (except for the parts which are now ruined). In answer to your question, though, this isn't a once-in-1000-year flood... more a twice-a-century sort of flood... we had floods in the 1890s and again in 1974. The Wivenhoe Dam was constructed to prevent the 1974 flood from ever happening again. It didn't work, partly because the folks in charge of operating the dam didn't start releasing water until it was too late... which was itself partly because they've been worrying for most of the last decade about running out of water and forgot that too much water is also a problem. There's a reason why the architectural style known as a "Queenslander" is a house on stilts though -- Queensland is not a stranger to floods.
- taitems 16y ago
  Except that a Queenslander is built on stilts primarily for heat-related reasons, and flood avoidance is only a byproduct.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  Yes, and the reason is that raised houses with wide verandahs and 'wind tunnel' halls from front to back door are excellent for keeping cool during boiling hot summers. As for the dam management, the principles of operation are deliberately not subject to political whim, so were considered appropriate at the time. There was also more water then in 1974 AND a king tide, so there are some mitigating factors. Only the full inquest will really tell for sure.
dejb 16y ago
I though the outrage for New Orleans was most about about the authorities response to the floods. In Brisbane the response is seen as being pretty good. The last flood in 1974 was slightly worse and there have been worse ones in 1893 and 1841. So I guess you could say we are a bit prone to flooding. A damn was built in 1984 to mitigate the effects but it was close to full due to exceptional rain leading up to the main deluge. The damn still helped considerably and allowed them to block some water flow at high tide, but there is some suggestion that more proactive emptying earlier would have helped.
- stoney 16y ago
  The last flood in 1974 reached higher levels in Brisbane, but I haven't seen anything explaining to what extent (if any) the flood levels were lower this time because of the dam? Would it have been even worse without the dam? At the very least it let them control the flow a little bit so we didn't just get hit by a massive wave all in one go.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    > Would it have been even worse without the dam? This is part of what the Royal Commission will sort out.
  - brc 16y ago
    I think the general consensus is that the flooding would have been worse than 1974 had the dam not mitigated what it did. Investigations and modelling will determine to what extent the releases from the dam increased the flood level. I expect the outcome will be a new operating manual for the Dam, and more frequent minor flooding in keeping with an aggressive plan of keeping the dam at 100% (water storage) level, leaving the extra 100% of flood mitigation level free as soon as possible. Another possible outcome may be more dams on some of the other river systems, such as the Bremer river.
- arbitrarywords 16y ago
  The Queensland Police facebook page http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice is pretty interesting. Nearly everyone I know subscribed. Did a great job keeping people up to date, stopping panic, dispelling rumors, organizing workers. Pretty much the first time in my life I've appreciated Web 2.0 :) (Well, until the mobile towers went down...)
rodh257 16y ago
At the moment people seem to be more interested in helping out their mates and getting the place cleaned up. I'm sure the questions will be asked soon. It's been good to see the volunteering and general good will surrounding this event, any politicians who have tried to make political statements in relation to the crisis have been widely condemned. After the 74 floods, we built a dam (Wivanhoe) to prevent it from happening again, and yet we came not far from the 74 levels - amazing to think what would have happened without that dam!
westajay 16y ago
Ex-PM assisting with flood clean-up. Compare with Bush response. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqTnJK3uEi8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqTnJK3uEi8
- underwater 16y ago
  It's worth noting that Kevin Rudd lives in Brisbane. And he ended up in hospital after wading through the waters with cuts on his feet.
  - skeletonjelly 16y ago
    It should also be noted he got this cut from helping people in his electorate move furniture out of their houses.
  - brc 16y ago
    It should also be noted he took the time to alert the media he was about to go and help people move out of houses. I'm not making this up - some of the media have reported his office alerting them. In reality the PM who deposed him was in town, and I think he felt compelled to get some air-time to compete, seeing as he was the local boy and all. No love lost between those two.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      That's one way of looking at it. On the other hand, the way people behave in crisis situations is largely dependent upon the way they see prominent people behaving. If prominent people are out there volunteering and helping out their neighbours then it makes it more likely that other folks will too. Mr Rudd is probably the most prominent Brisbanite at the moment (possible exceptions of the Premier and the Lord Mayor who were busy with their actual duties) so by helping out his neighbours (with cameras present) he can do a lot to set the tone for the behaviour of Brisbanites during and after the disaster (which I must say has been pretty much exemplary). I'd never vote for Kevin Rudd, but I'm perfectly prepared to give him due credit for doing the right thing. (Unless of course it turns out that he only helped out for five minutes and stopped as soon as the cameras left).
brc 16y ago
Why is it different? Most people in Australia know of the extremes of the place. So major fires, droughts, floods, storms and cyclones are only a matter of when, rather than if. It's not a 1000 year flood. These types of things happen at least once every 50 years (plus more frequent minor floods) going back about 170 years to the written history. The major dam built to mitigate (not prevent) flooding arguably might have performed better to lower the peak, but the flood event came after a month of record rainfall, and the dam operators followed the manual given to them. That might need review for future operations, but it's not like someone did something rash or stupid. Australia is not a place of high social tension, or of high crime. Brisbane itself is a sunny, peaceful city with a normally benign river winding through the middle. When a disaster strikes, people are more likely to muck in and help out their less fortunate neighbours than to try and steal their stuff. Not that looting doesn't happen - some does, but there is plenty of incidents where citizens have interrupted looters and run them out of town. Another feature of Brisbane flooding is that it affects rich and poor equally. Some of the most expensive houses front the river and have private pontoons (most of which are now in the ocean) - these get flooded. Some of the poorer areas are built in low-lying land, which also gets flooded. So it's not a class thing in that only the poor get affected. Some of the worst hit suburbs are also the most expensive suburbs to live. As to why Australia tends to come together rather than fall apart - well, that would make for a fascinating social study. Personally I see it enshrined as part of the nations (and especially Queensland) culture - fair go, mateship, sticking together when the chips are down, having strength in adversity. You can probably explain as much when the most celebrated annual military parade day (Anzac day) commemorates Australia first and greatest military defeat, whereas there are no parades celebrating Australian military victories. Or, to sum up even more succinctly, despite sharing a language and both being previous colonies, Australia and America are fundamentally different countries in many ways.
- hugh3 16y ago
  There are parts of America where people, when disaster strikes, will band together and help each other out. There are other parts of America where people, when disaster strikes, will start looting and setting fire to police cars. Australia just happens to resemble the best parts of America rather than the worst parts, in this regard.
guelo 16y ago
This is no where near the disaster that Katrina was

jerf 16y ago

Who would be the target of this outrage? I know nothing about Aussie politics, honest question.

fungi 16y ago
depends shock jocks will blame the greens "for not letting us build more dams" or some other rubbish. greens (like me) will blame poor planning for building cities and major infrastructure on known flood plains.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Effects can have more than one cause, my friend.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- hugh3 16y ago
  Brisbane has been in its present location since 1825. If the "green" answer to "how can we stop floods in Brisbane" is "well you shouldn't have built a city there in the first place, so nyer" then I don't think that's the kind of attitude that's going to do wonders for the cause of environmentalism. Seriously though, to the extent that there's fingers to be pointed they should be pointed at the folks in charge of the Wivenhoe Dam. But hey, I'm not a dam engineer, so maybe we really do need a second dam.
  - fungi 16y ago
    tokyo has a big ass green belt around it's river http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.738057,139.824747&spn=0.004441,0.009903&t=h&z=17 http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.738057,139.824747&... edit: for a positive comparison checkout south bank http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.478211,153.023704&z=18&t=k&nmd=20110113 http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.478211,153.023704&z=18&#3... edit2: another example of green belts along rivers is Curitiba in southern Brasil see: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-25.45894,-49.191552&spn=0.00494,0.009903&t=h&z=17 http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-25.45894,-49.191552&... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Hydrography_and_Pluviometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Hydrography_and_Pluvio...
    - blasdel 16y ago
      There's also epic flood control stuff on the river north of Tokyo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underground_Discharge_Channel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Undergr...
      - fungi 16y ago
        i'm constantly floored by the scale and quality of infrastructure in japan, and not just tokyo even out woop woop they have rail, road, water and telco infrastructure that makes our efforts look feeble. amazing shit you can do when you run public debt at close to 100% of GDP :)
        wakeless 16y ago
        And when you have population density. It makes economic sense to provide better services when you have x number of people per m^2 as compared to the Australian density. I'm a big believer that Australian cities should be bearing this in mind and building up rather than out.
        jacques_chester 16y ago
        Japanese public debt is actually at ~200% of GDP. Australia is not seen as a particularly safe bond issuer, we could not sustain that level of debt.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  Except for Bob Brown. Who is now widely perceived as being a heartless loony. (For O/S readers, the leader of the Greens party claimed that "The Coal Industry should have to pay for the cleanup as it was caused by climate change, which is their fault" (Paraphrased). This is not only unproven, it's also a cop-out... PEOPLE used that coal Bob, they're to blame as well if we believe your causality logic. It's a good thing there were no floods before this year, and certainly none in the 19th century to disprove your theory that natural disasters only happen to naughty planets whose inhabitants mine coal)
  - fungi 16y ago
    privatise the profit, socialise the costs.
    - brc 16y ago
      Serious question now : do you really believe/agree with what Bob Brown is saying? Or are you going along with the support just because you support his political party? He has no facts or even scientific support for his statement. To state that the Australian coal industry has somehow caused major flooding is to indulge in bald-faced lying of the type that only agenda-driven politicians can manage. The one data point of worse flooding in 1893 before the coal industry even existed is case closed for most rational people. Not even the most activist climate scientist is prepared to definitively link the floods to warming temperature, let along the percentage of warming attributed to co2 emissions, let alone the 1% of global co2 emissions that Australia accounts for. About the best you'll get is 'global warming may have contributed to the flooding'. And that's hardly a smoking gun of the type Brown is fantasizing about. If I was a supporter of Bob Brown I would be embarassed by this particular outburst.
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        I wouldn't be. Bob Brown has form on this sort of thing. He blamed the ACT and Victoria bushfires on global warming also. Basically his major supporters at this point must be the forgetful and the shameless.
- brc 16y ago
  Not just shock jocks. Normal people as well. Your policy response, which can be paraphrased as 'don't build dams, move major cities' is idealogically warped and just wishful thinking. You would find it hard outside of your peer group to find anyone to take you seriously. The cities are where they are. It's not a surprise that Brisbane and Ipswich floods - the very first parts of written QLD history contain stories of immense flooding events. More flood mitigation via Dams is the only sensible and possible response. More dams also has the side effect of more water supplies and possibly more hydro-electric power.
  - panacea 16y ago
    "Your policy response, which can be paraphrased as 'don't build dams, move major cities' is idealogically warped and just wishful thinking." I could be wrong, but I think he's suggesting not building on the areas of the city which form the flood plain, not the whole city. We have an accurate record of which areas of the City were flooded in 1974. The areas that flooded recently are a subset of those areas. People were allowed to build in these areas because the Dam was supposed to have mitigated the risk. We could have kept zoning plans in place to deter building in these areas and still had a vibrant city built up around them. More river-front parkland to boot!
    - brc 16y ago
      It doesn't matter if it is 5% of a city or the whole city, it's not going to happen. The areas that were flooded now were mostly populated in 1974. There's a popular meme going around that huge areas of previously-vacant land was built upon. While that might be true in some instances of outer suburbs, in general the flooded suburbs of Brisbane were the same ones as all the previous floods. As I've already stated, if you want to clear the city from the low-lying areas, you'll have to forcibly acquire a large amount of private property, which is either an expensive (if the law is followed) route, or a suspension of the current law. So suggesting the low lying areas be forcibly cleared is clearly unworkable. And it involves acquiring and demolishing the majority of the CBD. If you think that is even remotely possible then I've got the Story Bridge to sell you. Everyone who purchases property in Brisbane is well aware of the 1974 floods. I know, because I purchased a property knowing full well it could be flooded one day as it was in 1974. And last week it was. But I'm not about to sell it or have the government confiscate it because it gets flooded once every 40 years. About the best thing that could happen is something along the lines of a) new developments must have critical infrastructure (electrical circuits etc) about the 100-year flood leve b) flood prone suburbs could have prominent markers, such as bands around power poles to remind people of previous flood heights. There's a popular one in the Breakfast Creek Hotel. c) new housing in flood zones could have a mandate not to use water soluble materials such as plasterboard in lower levels, and could be mandated to have the main living area above flood height. People with older houses often came out with no problems because the old houses were built with floods in mind. This idea of avoiding flood risk by avoiding waterfront areas is silly. By the same token, all residents should abandon Cairns and Townsville because of the cyclone risk. And cyclones in the north happen far more frequently, and with more devastation than Brisbane floods.
prawn 16y ago
The Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, is widely considered to have actually done quite well out of the election - has been seen to have reacted quickly, done her part, said the right things, etc. There are a few scammers rightfully copping it, but it's been a pretty galvanising event in Australia.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  I think the fact that she was genuinely emotionally upset helped.
jacques_chester 16y ago
A Royal Commission has been launched to investigate. In Australian law these are the most powerful forms of inquiry. An RC is completely independent of the government, cannot be influenced by Ministers or Parliament, has very broad powers to find evidence and even to compel witnesses, can decide independently what to investigate subject to its terms of reference and can draw any conclusions it wishes. Generally they are led by respected judges with technical experts in support. So sweeping are their powers that they are only ever appointed in the most extreme situations, such as massive natural disasters (Victoria bushfires, now Queensland floods) or revelations of severe maladministration (corruption in Queensland and NSW police forces). The Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria did point to individual as well as systemic failures. Some of these individuals were seen as being close enough to the government that the Royal Commission's findings contributed to the downfall of the government at a subsequent election.
stoney 16y ago
Well the political hierarchy is something like: - Campbell Newman, Lord Mayor of Brisbane - Anna Bligh, Premier of Queensland - Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia I think it's pretty unlikely that you could pin the blame on any of them and they all responded well once the crisis happened. The operating rules for the Wivenhoe dam (which is supposed to mitigate this kind of thing) decide how much water can be released and when, and that is set at the state level (i.e. by Queensland state government), so probably Anna Bligh is the easiest target in that respect. I saw an official describe the dam operating rules as "conservative", but I'm not sure in which direction they are conservative - in the direction of minimising releases or minimising risk of overflow.
burgerbrain 16y ago
Bush of course, duh. It's a well-known fact that he did Brisbane because he hates Aussies.

chrisaycock 16y ago

Australia was suffering severe drought for many years until 2010. There was always fear of brush fire getting out of control (similar to California's wild fires) and there were water restrictions in many cities. After persistent conditions like that, flooding was unthinkable.

neckbeard 16y ago
Not really - El Nino cycles followed by La Nina mean that drought followed by flood is a common theme along the East coast of Australia. One of the more patriotic pieces of poetry in Australia (My Country, Dorothea Mackellar) even refers the "droughts and flooding rains". Australians also always have bushfire risk - it is just part and parcel of the native vegetation, and fire mitigation techniques only go so far (see the bad Canberra fires of 2003 or the disastrous Victorian fires in 2009).

hugh3 16y ago

Differences between this and Katrina: 1. The Australian media doesn't run on a 24-hour "outrage" cycle. We don't have any way to blame this on some targeted political figure (though certainly political figures have come in for some criticism). People will get blamed (particularly those who were in charge of the dam that was supposed to prevent this from happening again) but it'll happen slowly and in a controlled manner, not in a rapid flurry of 24-hour-news-station activity. We have a procedure for finger-pointing, and it's called a Royal Commission... we'll spend a year investigating and holding hearings and then eventually find the correct people at whom to tut-tut. 2. The death toll is relatively low. Very low in Brisbane itself (where the rise of the floodwaters was gentle) and a mere dozen or so in other parts of the state (where flash floods did occur). Sad and all that, but still on a relatively small scale. 3. No breakdown of order. Partly because a river flood is nothing like a hurricane (the city itself wasn't cut off, and if you're in an affected area you can walk five blocks to an unaffected area) and partly because of the different quality of people in the two cities. 4. New Orleans already had serious problems (poverty, race relations) which were only exacerbated. Brisbane was a pretty nice place, and it's still a pretty nice place (except for the parts which are now ruined). In answer to your question, though, this isn't a once-in-1000-year flood... more a twice-a-century sort of flood... we had floods in the 1890s and again in 1974. The Wivenhoe Dam was constructed to prevent the 1974 flood from ever happening again. It didn't work, partly because the folks in charge of operating the dam didn't start releasing water until it was too late... which was itself partly because they've been worrying for most of the last decade about running out of water and forgot that too much water is also a problem. There's a reason why the architectural style known as a "Queenslander" is a house on stilts though -- Queensland is not a stranger to floods.

taitems 16y ago
Except that a Queenslander is built on stilts primarily for heat-related reasons, and flood avoidance is only a byproduct.
Dylanlacey 16y ago
Yes, and the reason is that raised houses with wide verandahs and 'wind tunnel' halls from front to back door are excellent for keeping cool during boiling hot summers. As for the dam management, the principles of operation are deliberately not subject to political whim, so were considered appropriate at the time. There was also more water then in 1974 AND a king tide, so there are some mitigating factors. Only the full inquest will really tell for sure.

dejb 16y ago

I though the outrage for New Orleans was most about about the authorities response to the floods. In Brisbane the response is seen as being pretty good. The last flood in 1974 was slightly worse and there have been worse ones in 1893 and 1841. So I guess you could say we are a bit prone to flooding. A damn was built in 1984 to mitigate the effects but it was close to full due to exceptional rain leading up to the main deluge. The damn still helped considerably and allowed them to block some water flow at high tide, but there is some suggestion that more proactive emptying earlier would have helped.

stoney 16y ago
The last flood in 1974 reached higher levels in Brisbane, but I haven't seen anything explaining to what extent (if any) the flood levels were lower this time because of the dam? Would it have been even worse without the dam? At the very least it let them control the flow a little bit so we didn't just get hit by a massive wave all in one go.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  > Would it have been even worse without the dam? This is part of what the Royal Commission will sort out.
- brc 16y ago
  I think the general consensus is that the flooding would have been worse than 1974 had the dam not mitigated what it did. Investigations and modelling will determine to what extent the releases from the dam increased the flood level. I expect the outcome will be a new operating manual for the Dam, and more frequent minor flooding in keeping with an aggressive plan of keeping the dam at 100% (water storage) level, leaving the extra 100% of flood mitigation level free as soon as possible. Another possible outcome may be more dams on some of the other river systems, such as the Bremer river.
arbitrarywords 16y ago
The Queensland Police facebook page http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice is pretty interesting. Nearly everyone I know subscribed. Did a great job keeping people up to date, stopping panic, dispelling rumors, organizing workers. Pretty much the first time in my life I've appreciated Web 2.0 :) (Well, until the mobile towers went down...)

rodh257 16y ago

At the moment people seem to be more interested in helping out their mates and getting the place cleaned up. I'm sure the questions will be asked soon. It's been good to see the volunteering and general good will surrounding this event, any politicians who have tried to make political statements in relation to the crisis have been widely condemned. After the 74 floods, we built a dam (Wivanhoe) to prevent it from happening again, and yet we came not far from the 74 levels - amazing to think what would have happened without that dam!

westajay 16y ago

Ex-PM assisting with flood clean-up. Compare with Bush response. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqTnJK3uEi8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqTnJK3uEi8

underwater 16y ago
It's worth noting that Kevin Rudd lives in Brisbane. And he ended up in hospital after wading through the waters with cuts on his feet.
- skeletonjelly 16y ago
  It should also be noted he got this cut from helping people in his electorate move furniture out of their houses.
- brc 16y ago
  It should also be noted he took the time to alert the media he was about to go and help people move out of houses. I'm not making this up - some of the media have reported his office alerting them. In reality the PM who deposed him was in town, and I think he felt compelled to get some air-time to compete, seeing as he was the local boy and all. No love lost between those two.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    That's one way of looking at it. On the other hand, the way people behave in crisis situations is largely dependent upon the way they see prominent people behaving. If prominent people are out there volunteering and helping out their neighbours then it makes it more likely that other folks will too. Mr Rudd is probably the most prominent Brisbanite at the moment (possible exceptions of the Premier and the Lord Mayor who were busy with their actual duties) so by helping out his neighbours (with cameras present) he can do a lot to set the tone for the behaviour of Brisbanites during and after the disaster (which I must say has been pretty much exemplary). I'd never vote for Kevin Rudd, but I'm perfectly prepared to give him due credit for doing the right thing. (Unless of course it turns out that he only helped out for five minutes and stopped as soon as the cameras left).

brc 16y ago

Why is it different? Most people in Australia know of the extremes of the place. So major fires, droughts, floods, storms and cyclones are only a matter of when, rather than if. It's not a 1000 year flood. These types of things happen at least once every 50 years (plus more frequent minor floods) going back about 170 years to the written history. The major dam built to mitigate (not prevent) flooding arguably might have performed better to lower the peak, but the flood event came after a month of record rainfall, and the dam operators followed the manual given to them. That might need review for future operations, but it's not like someone did something rash or stupid. Australia is not a place of high social tension, or of high crime. Brisbane itself is a sunny, peaceful city with a normally benign river winding through the middle. When a disaster strikes, people are more likely to muck in and help out their less fortunate neighbours than to try and steal their stuff. Not that looting doesn't happen - some does, but there is plenty of incidents where citizens have interrupted looters and run them out of town. Another feature of Brisbane flooding is that it affects rich and poor equally. Some of the most expensive houses front the river and have private pontoons (most of which are now in the ocean) - these get flooded. Some of the poorer areas are built in low-lying land, which also gets flooded. So it's not a class thing in that only the poor get affected. Some of the worst hit suburbs are also the most expensive suburbs to live. As to why Australia tends to come together rather than fall apart - well, that would make for a fascinating social study. Personally I see it enshrined as part of the nations (and especially Queensland) culture - fair go, mateship, sticking together when the chips are down, having strength in adversity. You can probably explain as much when the most celebrated annual military parade day (Anzac day) commemorates Australia first and greatest military defeat, whereas there are no parades celebrating Australian military victories. Or, to sum up even more succinctly, despite sharing a language and both being previous colonies, Australia and America are fundamentally different countries in many ways.

hugh3 16y ago
There are parts of America where people, when disaster strikes, will band together and help each other out. There are other parts of America where people, when disaster strikes, will start looting and setting fire to police cars. Australia just happens to resemble the best parts of America rather than the worst parts, in this regard.

guelo 16y ago

This is no where near the disaster that Katrina was