Thread: Old Croc

Over the last two weeks we've all seen life up north in Townsville take a dive. I've kept in touch with Old Croc who had not being to well prior the rain.
It seems it all got to much for him and he's taken to higher ground

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Hi Guys,

I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this post ! I've seen the pictures on UK TV news. It seems that the dam was no longer able to cope with the amount of water that the rain produced, so the powers that be, decided it was better to flood the area and "a few homes", rather than let the dam overflow.

A similar thing was done in York a couple of years ago ! I understand that some are still waiting for compensation and still not back in their homes. Whilst I'm aware that the incident in York was called an accident, it still had a terrible consequence.

Originally Posted by BaronJ

Hi Guys,

I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this post ! I've seen the pictures on UK TV news. It seems that the dam was no longer able to cope with the amount of water that the rain produced, so the powers that be, decided it was better to flood the area and "a few homes", rather than let the dam overflow.

Baron, the dam has been overflowing for days. The dam serves two purposes. Firstly as a small water supply for the city, and secondly as a flood mitigation dam.

The dam gates have been partly open for a few days or more now. However last night the dam reached or very nearly reached the absolute maximum level the dam can safely hold back, the gates were fully opened to drop the dam level, releasing nearly 2 megalitres (2 000 000l) per second of water.

The weather event has been a bit unusual since the monsoon has stagnated over that area. I am ~600km south and we have had no rain and are essentially in drought conditions still.

I believe the dam is at 200%. The danger is it will fail. Better to release some of the water at a semi- controlled rate than the wall fail and release all of it in a hurry.

Russ

I hope you and your all good mate, then I hope your shed gear is ok

Hi Guys,

Thank you for the updates on Townville ! The news people made it sound like a major disaster, particularly after the Venezuelan dam breach. I hope everyone is Ok.

Hi everyone, I am safe and not flooded, we still were 2M/6'6" above the water. I lost track of the actual rainfall but we had 1.5 M/ 5 feet in 7 days and it has not stopped. As RC said the dam is measured at 100% at the spillway for water storage then up to 360% for emergency flood mitigation. When it was getting up towards the 200% mark they opened the floodgates to release 1000 cubic metres a second of water into Ross River as we were getting 300 mm/ 1 foot of rain each night over the catchment area. When it went up to about 220% and more rain was coming, they decided to open the gates fully adding another 1000 cubic metres a second to the flow, so it's now coming out at 2000 cubic metres a second. This was to protect the dam.
We were told to evacuate but my scientist daughter measured the river height at our house and calculated the extra volume coming and reckoned we would be ok. Well she was right and when that surge came past us at 1am we still had 2m/ 6'6" to go. We sit on the lowest of 3 weirs below the dam, but below our weir is the tidal reach of the river and it is everyone below this that have been flooded. Saw the big green shed at Idalia had over 1M / 3'6" of water going through it.
This weather event is record breaking and the weather pattern is not going to change much for the next week.
Thanks to all the well-wishers,
Rgds,
Crocy.

Good to hear that things aren't too bad with you Crocky, we were up your way last year, visited a mate who had moved up there from Tasmania and had bought a unit at Carlisle Gardens Retirement Village. So far I haven't been able to contact him, either by phone, text or email, I don't suppose you know if that area was flooded or not do you? It could be that the mobile phone infrastructure is out, or his phone is lost, flat or any number of other possibilities, but if his home is safe, chances are that he and his partner are too. Any local knowledge gratefully received. Cheers and here's hoping some of your rain can migrate down south to make things better for all of us,
Rob

heard from Croc this afternoon again tells me that old croc is quite and age personally it's hard to tell which is older Glad you ok mate keep it that way and the family too.