ARC Cargo

It wasn't just us on the plane!

Home Sweet Home Away from Home

This was the Red Cross Headquarters for the operation, set up in the local Red Cross office. It was good to see a framed photo of Henry Dunant overseeing the operation the way he oversees every Red Cross office in Australia. You gotta love that guy! He had a pretty good idea to create an international movement out of an experience on a bloody battlefield.

Welcome to MacKay...

...now watch out for the "jet blast" (the red sign).

The not-so-sunshiney-state

I'm back!

Thanks right everyone... my luggage is spewed all over the living room floor, and half of the laundry is done. In a nut shell, I am back from MacKay, Queensland. I have a few days off as a mental health break and look forward to posting some pictures and some stories from the journey. We had another wave of Red Crossers head up there Sunday night, and another wave will go up this Friday. It looks like MacKay is on the loooong road to recovery.

Oh dear...

Rain intensity is off the scale
Rainfall figures collated from last Friday’s flooding rains have revealed the enormity of the situation, with the rain intensity twice that of a one in one hundred year event.

Mackay Mayor Julie Boyd said an analysis of the rainfall intensity indicates that Mackay received peak rainfall intensities up to 184 millimetres in an hour.

“The recorded intensity was double the one in one hundred-year rainfall intensity, according to figures from the Bureau of Meteorology, “ Cr Boyd said.

The figures show the rain intensity continued unabated for six hours, resulting in the city receiving falls well in excess of the one in one hundred year rainfall event during that period.

“This resulted in Mackay receiving about 600 millimetres over a six hour period.

“No drainage system in Queensland is designed to carry runoff from such a significant event,” Cr Boyd said.

Cr Boyd said early indications suggest that this rainfall event was among one of the most intense rainfall events recorded in Australia.

All our new developments are based on the recommended state standards.

Cr Boyd said it’s important to recognise that this rainfall event also occurred with the city already saturated from falls of up to 200 millimetres only days before.

“This creates an already saturated environment, which increases the storm water runoff into the drainage systems,” she said.

Mackay has received about 80 per cent of its annual rainfall in the first seven weeks of the year.

MacKay Bound!

I am leaving in about 15 minutes for MacKay, Queensland on a Red Cross deployment. Woohoo! I haven't been deployed since Katrina in '05 so I've been DYING to go (as many of you are well aware, I'm sure). I will miss Megan though. :(