[Talking about the flooding centered around Julia Creek/Cloncurry...]
This flooding is of epic scale, and everyone who's seen it first-hand, are stunned with how many animals it has killed.
Reports of roads littered with carcasses of cattle, roos, eagles, hawks, and EVERYTHING.
Our crutching contractor lives just South of the disaster zone, and they got through with only losing about 30% of their livestock. Owen said the rain tally reached 9 inches, and they were praying it stopped, but it continued on for another 7 inches. 16 inches (400mm) in total. And that's a drop in the bucket compared to places 200kms North of there.
Owen said that it was bad enough that livestock went from drought conditions, to dragging themselves through mud, to then having 2 and a half days of unrelenting cyclonic winds, with light rain mixed in. Best guesstimate was the conditions placed drought-stricken animals into ~4 degree conditions, with wind & rain sapping whatever energy they had remaining. Most of them simply froze to death.
My niece was working on a property on the bottom edge of the disaster zone. The property lost 98% of it's livestock, and so she's lost her job.
She was rather shell-shocked when she arrived back in Longreach; all a bit confronting.
A story in the district of a young family managing a property; I think it's one of the big company-owned places up around the epicenter..
The family had to be evacuated, but the husband stayed behind to shoot all the pets. He was picked up some hours later by another helicopter...
The fact was, they all knew that there was no chance of saving the animals, and they would have staved to death. The family elected to give them a quick and merciful end, rather than starving and/or freezing to death.
And so now he's being criticised at length on social media. Why didnt he build cages for them up on the roof??
[Yep; In day 4 of driving rain, I always like to clamber up on the roof with my welder and start using lots of electrical tools up there, because it's just so PHUKKING SMART!!]
Apparently; this story isnt unusual.
But this family's decision highlights what it takes to be a farmer.
It's not a case of simply owning a freaking busted-arse horse on 5 acres; 20 kms from a Coles supermarket.
It's the situation when you have to decide the best options for your livestock, and having the guts to follow it through.
Much of the charity flooding into the region, (again) isnt being delivered in the smartest way. Stories of army helicopters dropping single large bales to cattle; the hay would have cost well beyond 10 times the value of the animal. Even more sad, is many of the cattle were last mustered by helicopter, and so are trying to swim away from the hay-drop, and burning up energy they really dont have in reserve.
A lot of these cattle are effectively walking dead, but none of well-intended want to consider that.
[complicated to explain, but a herbivores gut shuts down when starved for more than a day or so, and takes a long time to re-start].
And so rather than dropping hay, we need people deciding whether it's better to put a bullet through their heads to stop their suffering, or whether they'll respond to feeding. Grab a heap of large animal vets, and send them out to assess and cull as necessary
There are dozens of helicopters based up there; working their guts out to assist. Fuel (Avgas AND Av-Tur) is more valuable than gold up there at present, because no-one in the government has thought of running fuel in by C17 or hercules.. I've heard of helos carrying a drum of avgas slung underneath, because they know they wont be able to get any fuel anywhere. And helo pilots sleeping with the families, as they waste too much time returning to base in towns like Cloncurry. People are slaving their guts out to help, but the coordination from government is so freaking useless...
One phukwit armchair critic yesterday suggested people should've had all of their livestock insured, as if that would help the result?
[Phukwit's obviously never fronted up the insane cost of insuring livestock himself...or noticed how squirrelly insurers get when its a flood of epic proportions]
Most of the people up there are simply trying to remove all the dead cattle from their gardens/sheds/houses/cattleyards/etc etc etc, and havent even gotten around to counting the financial cost.
Thats likely to be the pain and anguish for next week.
It makes me angry; yet ANOTHER example of how poorly disaster management is being co-ordinated across this country.
Rant done for now...