[talk-au] Massive flooding

[John Smith]

On 15 January 2011 10:45, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> Perhaps somebody familiar with the affected areas could create a list
> of specific ways that remote mappers can help?  Tasks that include
> specific geographic starting points and limited scope are easier to
> act on.

Almost all eastern states of Australia are effected to some extent,
Brisbane[1] and surrounding areas is just making most of the headlines
because of the amount of people effected and the potential cost of the
disaster.

That said Grantham, Qld[2] seems to have been hardest hit with a flash
flood demolishing houses and killing the people inside them.
Toowoomba[3] was hit pretty hard as well, I think several people died
during the same flash flood event.

Last I heard the death toll was at 16 for Qld, I'm not aware if there
has been any deaths in other states.

Rockhampton[4] and Bundaberg[5] wer also flooded extensively, and
there were reports of lots of snakes and crocodiles in the flood
water.

The in the state of Western Australia you have bush fires taking out
houses, again because of all the focus on Brisbane these other areas
aren't getting the same sort of coverage.

Australia Post spent a lot of time and effort figuring out routes
around the flood waters, this would have been a great opportunity for
OSM and people making routing software to shine.

> "map the extent of the ridge starting [lat, lon] and running northeast for n km"
>
> "map the roads, now flooded, between that ridge and the river"

Thankfully the water is now receding and so far the rain is holding
off, but places like St George in south western Qld have just had
their 2nd major flood event in 10 months, so it's possible with the
ground so wet that it wouldn't take much rain to kick off another
major flood event in the near future, and this might be likely with a
strong la nina event persisting much longer than most had previously
predicted.

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-27.458&lon=153.027&zoom=10&layers=M
[2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-27.578&lon=152.20163&zoom=15&layers=M
[3] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-27.5666&lon=151.9347&zoom=13&layers=M
[4] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-23.4001&lon=150.5106&zoom=12&layers=M
[5] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-24.8757&lon=152.3254&zoom=12&layers=M

* I'm not sure where the bush fires are exactly, can anyone else
comment on this?

These are only the more populated areas that have been effected, there
is lots of farms isolated due to flood water that have to get
helicopters to bring in food and other supplies that is of course
assuming their farm house is still above water.