The Queensland Floods

The Australian government was a major contributor of aid, the highest contributor after the United States. Immediately after the disaster struck the Australian government allocated 60 million in disaster relief and within 36 hours’ aid had been sent to Thailand.

(Ref. 4) On April 28, 2009 Houston, TX experience yet another flood and it was caused by the aftermath of a Tornado. People, houses, vehicles and roads were affected. Many people had to rescued and cars along with ambulances were submerged under water. Highways were forced to be closed and people were captured canoeing or walking to get to places due to high waters in the area. In just 24 hours about nine inches of rain were being reported in areas in Houston.

Storm water moves it’s way across streets, sidewalks, and lawns. As it travels it picks up pollutants such as fertilizer, pet waste, sediment, and other chemicals that may be on the ground. This waste can find its way into the streams and rivers. These may create dead zones that kill marine life. Dead zones are hypoxic areas in bodies of water caused by nutrient pollution from runoff. The sediment that comes along with the water ends up blocking sunlight from reaching underwater grass and suffocates shellfish. Depending on how fast the water is going, it can flood certain areas like urban, suburban, forests, and wetlands. Water tends to travel faster on surfaces that are impervious.

The flood of 1997 started with a wetter the normal fall then ground froze early that year which made it easier to freeze all the liquid. When all the snow melted the water was released onto the surface and it made it easy for the flood to happen. When the climate changed is when all the flooding occurred. After the red river along the north dakota and minnesota was flooded it started to flood more often and continue to happen. The flooding of 1997 wrecked houses and old buildings it made it hard to drive and to get from here to there. The pastures were wrecked making it hard for animals to get around because all of the mucky fields which was making the animals sick.

Hurricane Katrina is the most expensive natural disaster in American history (Kates et al., 2006). This is supported by the statistics from August 2006, where the death total surpassed 1836 and the cost of the destruction was projected to be near $108 billion (Kates et al., 2006). On August 29, it made landfall in Louisiana as a category 3 Hurricane and its aftermath was devastating

For instance, around 500 people were violently drowned to death by the rapid waters rising into homes and communities. Many people lost friends, and loved ones to this flood. Many tragically lost their homes and jobs too. Homes were destroyed, jobs were taken down, and people became devastated and depressed. A lot of people were able to go live will relatives, or friends, but a majority of them had nowhere to go.

A natural disaster is something that we cannot avoid, but we can mitigate the effects. Flooding is a natural disaster that we mostly experience in our community, and in case of a flooding in LAPS we should be able to act towards it. An important question we can ask to ourselves is, how can we help LAPS in case of a flooding? There is many different ways that we can help this organization, one is by

The Ellicott City flood was destructive because it was on a high gradient stream. The high gradient stream made it flood faster, and had low stream discharge. Discharge is cross section of stream channel. It was also capable of moving large particles, which is an example of deposition and erosion. In the experiment, the ‘Main Street Ellicott City’ stream was more affected than the Meandering Stream. The Main Street Ellicott City stream was flooded faster, and more houses and cars were destroyed compared to the Meandering

The floods were caused by heavy rain from a tropical cyclone named cyclone Tasha that joined with a La Niña event* caused an overflow of water in rivers and lakes. The La Niña in 2010 was the strongest La Niña since 1973.This caused a lot of rainfall across Queensland. That December was the wettest on record and 107 places had their highest rainfalls ever. 2010 was also recorded as the states most wet spring since the 1900’s and Australia's third wettest year. Floods started across the state in December. On the 28th December a monsoonal trough crossed the coast from the Coral Sea, bringing heavy rain from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Gold Coast, overfilling a dam in Towoomba, causing it to malfunction and release the water.

“Johnstown flood” is a short story written by David McCullough. This story talks about the miraculous survival of a little girl named Gertrude. Gertrude’s sheer luck got her up the hill safely. Of course, with the help of several people she met along the way. I think that this is an extraordinary act of how worked together and some people put his/her life at risk to save a small child that they didn’t even knew. I fell that this is a great example of how human beings come together in times of need and extreme danger and in the way that we try to protect ourselves from disaster.

2. The Queensland floods were part of the La Niña change that was predicted to happen during the season. La Niña is a change in air pressure across the central and eastern tropical Pacific resulting in warmer sea surface temperatures in the north of Australia. Historically, La Niña changes have bought large scale floods and increased risks of tropical cyclones. As expected, this particular La Niña change caused widespread heavy rain in the central and eastern Pacific affecting the North-East of Australia. The first sign of having a devastating flood period was the abnormally heavy rains during the winter dry season leading into September 2010 which was the wettest September on record. Following this, there was 7 months that were wetter than

The two most common names are the Great Flood of 1927 and the Mississippi River Flood of 1927. ( Mississippi River flood of 1927) The flood waters that came were at a distance of one mile wide and over one hundred feet deep. With all of this water coming from the flood the river itself actually became an theeighty mile wide inland sea. ( Natural Disasters) This flood did not stop there though, it went and displaced hundred of thousands of people from their homes and went and official killed over one hundred people. In many of the heavily flooded areas they were submerged in over 30 feet of water in some of those location.

A flood can be defined in many depths but is simply water where it isn’t wanted. In late 2010 Queensland was affected by major flash flooding this continued on into the beginning of 2011 and ¾ of Queensland was declared a disaster zone.

Millions were made homeless by the huge waves that swept houses and cars away. It was estimated that the costs to repair all damage would be at approximately $5 billion.

Flooding occurs when water overflows from a stream or river. When the water levels become too high, the water flows out of the stream channel and over the stream banks, submerging the adjacent floodplain.