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Queensland floods recede to reveal extent of damage; 25 dead, 55 missing

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not to be picky but it's just QLD and not Q'ld

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The worst part today will be when the heat kicks in and the stench of the mud and remaining flood waters prevail. Yuck.

the_odeman: - While you're at it, sentences begin with capital letters and end with full stops. Not that you're being picky now.

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There will be heavy rain in the future; maybe they will build smarter now.

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Another well informed comment l see

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They mentioned three quarters of Qld being hit and area underwater as being size of France and Germany combined ... France is nearly twice the size of Germany, and three quarters of Qld is nearly twice the size of France, I think they need to adjust their representation of the area of devastation a bit. (For Americans) The area devastated is 500,967.6 square miles (which is also close to twice the size of Texas).

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@AdamB Building your city in a flood plane and not straightening out the river bends is a recipe for disaster. The river either needs to be straightened or a straight floodway built around the city that allows upstream rains to quickly flow to the sea.

There is no excuse for a modern city like Brisbane to ever be flooded.

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@proxy

If you talk only about the tiny area (as opposed to the whole picture) around the river in Brisbane you might have a point, I don't know the area around Brisbane River that well. But in respect to Toowoomba where most people died and many people are missing you are indeed wrong. This is from a mail from a personal friend in Toowoomba:

"It is crazy here. Like a war zone. Toowoomba is on top of the mountains and we never thought there would ever be a flood. How wrong we were." And as far as I remember there isn't even a river closeby.

So to point out perceived deficiencies in detail without understanding the geopgraphy and the whole picture is indeed "Another well informed comment l see".

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@tigris How can a town in a valley be "on top of the mountains?"

"Toowoomba, a city west of Brisbane in the Lockyer Valley"

Parts of the city are high, others are not, and there is definitely a river (Gowrie Creek) running through Toowoomba, always has been, The Murray river starts there, and probably everyone in Australia learns that in elementary school.

Most of the city of Toowoomba is (was) built inside a drained swamp.

Tell me about this "friend" of yours again.

But I was talking about Brisbane anyway.

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@ proxy

from Toowoombadotorg:

Toowoomba is a picturesque mountain city located in south east Queensland some 127Km west of the states capital, Brisbane. Clinging to the edge of the Great Dividing Range escarpment at an altitude of seven hundred meters above sea-level, the city affords breathtaking views of Table Top Mountain and the Lockyer Valley region across the east.

Excerpt from mail above was from a 60 yea old Toowoomba local born there and running a business in town.

There will be heavy rain in the future; maybe they will build smarter now.

A know-it-all-better attitude, implying people were stupid and by extension blaming their stupidity for this disaster, is, considering the situation, neither helpful nor appropriate.

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The Lord Mayor Campbell Newman of Brisbane, himself is calling for a public inquiry into how the state and local governments, across Queensland, can better protect their communities from the risks of flooding; i.e, build smarter.

A quote from Mr. Newman, "Everyone has to front up, accept what has happened" and be accountable."

A news.com.au story says "An inquiry should also examine local government policies that had permitted the building of thousands of properties in low-lying and flood-prone areas" and quotes Mr. Lord Mayor Newman as saying "There's obviously been policies between 1974 and 2004 that have contributed to the problems in this flood."

Build smarter.

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