Petros Khalesirad
Thousands more people are preparing to evacuate their homes as one of Australia’s worst floods continues to inundate the state of Queensland.
Forced evacuations are being planned in Rockhampton as rising floodwaters threaten the town of 77,000.
Petros Khalesirad describes the situation in the town.
“Here in Rockhampton we haven’t had the worst yet. Other towns, like Emerald, Theodore and Chinchilla, are in a much worse state. But the way the river system works, we expect all that water from Emerald will reach us within 48 hours. We are very close to being affected badly.
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The least of our worry is the damage to small communities – the floods are going to affect the whole nation “
We are at the moment close to reaching the water level of the big 1991 floods. This time around it could be much worse. It could be catastrophic.
The amount of water coming through our river is equivalent to Sydney Harbour every hour. This is an event of its kind.
In 2008 people in Emerald experienced a flood disaster and people living in affected areas modified their houses, but they are under water again and it’s getting worse.
We are lucky that we saw what happened in Emerald and we can prepare for the worst. We had a visit from the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
We set up an evacuation centre on the north side of the town and volunteers have evacuated houses that are thought to be worst affected. There have been forced evacuations of 2,000 residents. Where possible people have been evacuated to relatives and friends in other parts of town.
My involvement has been to post regular updates and information on my website about evacuation plans and how people should prepare. Yesterday I got 23,000 hits.
Some of the houses are already damaged – there’s water on the ground level. But the way these houses are built, the living areas tend to be on the first floor, exactly to avoid floods.
We’ve seen lots of panic-buying of food. Shelves in shopping centres are empty. But I think people have been over-reacting. We have groceries arriving today and in the worst case scenario, the military will be involved in helping.
Right now many people across Australia are stuck while on holiday and unable to return home. It’s the season to be jolly, it’s the season to be camping. I know many families with kids stuck camping.
I think that the least of our worry is the damage to small communities. Communities get rebuilt.
These floods are going to affect the state, the whole nation. It’s going to have a huge impact on mining commodities – several coal mines are under water and some won’t be operational for months.
There’ll be coal shortage and our ability to produce electricity will be affected. Certainly it will be an interesting start of the year and of the decade.”
Source: www. bbc.co.uk
