Weathering the storm before, during and after
This past Sunday, the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed the past eight years were the hottest since recordkeeping began back in the late 1800’s. It takes a certain kind of denialism to ignore what’s happening around us, yet letters and texts to these pages double down on the decade of inaction and head-in-the-sand attitude that could have helped Australia be a leading force for change, rather than relegating us as the country that wilfully ignored the canary in the coalmine.
If you stick to an echo-chamber of like-minded conspiracy theorists, you mightn’t have heard about disasters such as Greenland’s record ice melts, now even worse after receiving rain rather than snow for the first time this September.
The WMO State of the Global Climate Report detailed the highest concentration of the three major greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, last year.
Trapping hot air and warming the earth’s surface, the Wall Street Journal explained this week, leads to ‘more severe droughts, more intense rainfall, floods and storms,’ yet you will find the usual National Party suspects and supporters baulking at brilliant local scientific solutions offered to reduce these triggers, trotting out concocted scare campaigns from their comfortable rural estates.
Nobody could have missed this years’ devastating floods in NSW and Victoria, but it’s not just here, floods devastated a third of Pakistan in 2022 and are currently affecting Nigeria, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Venezuela.
Closer to home, Townsville residents were urged to brace for the third monsoon season in a row, with Mayor Jenny Hill saying, ‘Our waterways and dams have all received ongoing unseasonal rain in the past 12 months.’
For anyone affected by Townsville’s 2019 floods, this is not reassuring.
Sure, there was a Disaster Management meeting this week, but what about meaningful preparations?
When I first moved to Townsville 20 years ago, if you drove over the Bowen Road bridge you’d look down and see people fishing far below.
Now, the banks are just below the bridge, and as the very site where the floodwaters emerged to creep up
Bowen Road and engulf the surrounding suburbs, the red moon’s unseasonably high tide foreshadowed a repeat disaster waiting to happen.
Why no dredging of this built-up ground zero site during the past dry three years?
We’re also told the ‘operational procedures of the Ross River Dam gates’ have been ‘tested’, but we know how that went last time, with denial of responsibility from both Sunwater and Council as to their use as flood mitigation measures, so what’s changed?
Will there be earlier, smaller releases if required, rather than the night-time dump that flooded our homes?
Getting people to evacuate without their pets is another issue, we’ve seen southern SES workers treat pets as precious cargo, yet here is a condensed version of
Townsville’s pet policy, ‘Animals (except assistance animals) will not be accepted into a public cyclone shelter, designated places of refuge, or evacuation centres. Guide and disability dogs are excepted. These dogs will require proper identification and proof of vaccination.’
Good luck getting people to evacuate, then.
Disaster management isn’t just ticking boxes, it’s factoring in human responses and the realities of life.
Might just get me a canoe.