qlder comments

SolidariTea - yet again someone who does not know the whole facts. when will anonymous people on these forums stop making uneducated & ignorant statements about an issue they little or nothing about. this dam you mention is Wivenhoe dam, it is designed to hold approx 1.165 giga L for water supply with 1 1/2times that again for flood mitigation. it was at 100% supply storage on 4th Jan, with constant controlled releases since then it filled as much as 0.3 GL in one day alone, it is now at 180% capacity. the amount of rainfall we experienced here in Qld this last week was phenominal, with many areas receiving as much as 350mm in one day and some locations even having 250mm in a few short hours. The catchment extends for a total of 13,500km2. The dam was raised some years ago, but as you will find if you do your research, that combined rainfalls in previous months, december where i live, just north of brisbane, we had 675mm in December, we have had that again since the 1st Jan, with most since last Sunday, there was little chance brisbane was going to escape, especially given the frightening event that happenned in Toowoomab and flowed through the lockyer valley. Everyone will sit up and take notice when coking coal starts to get low in Japan's coal station reserves, or they can't get beef because we've none left to export. seems like the rest of the world is terribly insular when it comes to anything outside their own little world, sorry country. MAybe because Australia is a diverse, multicultural land that we get & expect news and information on other parts of the world, including tradgedies in Japan. So dont forget where your power comes from and a good deal of your food; not to mention where a good number of your exports go to.

goddog - i don't know where you are from, but this Brisbane flood is in addition to the other 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 square kilometers (yes million) of already flooded queensland area, as well as perhaps 1/2 that again in NSW, the state south of qld. Japan is only 377,000 km2 and great britain only 240,000 km2. 1/3 of the world coaking & power coal comes from this state and prices are already going up, so where ever you live in the world, you will see the effects of this as coal is being loaded at a very slow rate. wheat production is all but hammered by this event, beef production is affected, the city of Rockhampton which is Australias beef capital, has been in flood for nearly two weeks, so as for your 5% of the brisbane population, yeah not many, but pity about the rest of the state, hey! some coal mines will be months before they can produce again. i hope you learn to get your fact straight before you make insensitive comments about an event you are obviously poorly informed about.