Floods

I hope nobody thought I was making light of the floods over here yesterday with the cow story. I am glued to the news day and night and after reading so much sadness it was nice to be able to share something with our children that was on a lighter note. They've been quite scared by it all, even making up a disaster relief pack of our own just in case. Our son drew up an evacuation map of our street and where we would run to if we saw water coming. It was their way of coping and we've done a lot of talking about it this week. It's been a harrowing week for everyone and these are sorts of reports we've been seeing and reading about all week. This one in particular had me in tears just now being the mother of two small children myself  http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/floods/8197453/family-watched-as-son-was-swept-away

Loss of loved ones is the worst of it all. As for rebuilding it's going to take many, many months, in some cases years they say to rebuild the city of Brisbane and all the rural towns up and down the coast. 75% of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone. There have now been other places in Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, mostly country towns that have shared in the flood disaster in their own home towns.

Yesterday they reported on the News that there were over 22,000 volunteers that showed up for a massive big clean up effort. There were four pick up depots to meet at and people worked in four hour shifts with shovels, brooms, buckets. A lot of it is mud and they need to be extremely safe and careful because of disease.

While we are not able to go there for the clean up because of blocked and damaged roads and because of the danger of taking children into the area, we hope to help in other ways, financially, by opening our home to anyone who may need accomodation and by making donations of clothes to those who have lost everything.

I have never personally lived through a natural disaster myself, but it is a common story to read about over here - cyclones, bush fires and floods are an annual occurence. This one though has been unprecedented affecting a very large amount of people and property. It's very sad too to read reports of some who insist on looting while so many others are suffering their losses.

We are also still waiting to hear from Jasper's breeder. She and her husband have been isolated outside one of the main flooded area on their property for nearly two weeks now. It was only after 12 days that a helicopter finally found the people in that area and brought them food supplies. I've been in email contact with her, their phone connections all failed and she was worried that they would soon lose power. She says that they have evacuated the area but that she and her husband couldn't leave because it would mean leaving their large family of show dogs and puppies behind. She breeds Cavaliers and has many on the property. The road outside their home has been washed away into a 4m deep cavern and there is no way of driving away with the dogs. I pray for their safety and that some arrangements can be made to help them since it will be many months before the road can be rebuilt.