Cleaning up after the flood

The last weeks have been one of the wettest in a long time and was caused by an area of disturbed weather which later became tropical storm Nicole.  At this point I would like to extend my sympathies to those families who lost persons or who lost property to the flood and to the many others who were affected.  In order to keep the economy moving the government has to clean up as quickly as possible while at the same time controlling the expenditure.  How quickly and how efficiently this is done will determine how soon the country can return to normal.

For areas where rivers overflowed there is nothing that can be done about the water except to allow time for it to retreat.  I was heartened however by the government giving out a phone number for pregnant women about to deliver, and for those are having medical emergencies, to be air lifted out of their community.  Of course one must understand that during the actual rain it may not be possible to fly at all.  Once again someone tried to navigate the Bogwalk gorge and got caught in the flood waters and had to be airlifted out.  Persons do not appreciate that their reckless behaviour can result in other persons not receiving assistance because they have to be rescued.

There was damage to the approach areas of the crossing at Harbour View resulting in the community being cut off once again.  However I think that the National Works Agency is to be commended for restoring access to the community within 24 hours of the rain ceasing.  In addition equipment was moved to many areas to deal with clearing roads which had been blocked by land slides.  Another good thing was that the shelters were open to receive evacuees and persons heeded the call of the authorities to leave the flood prone areas.

One negative that came out of this situation is that there are not enough resources in place to deal with all of the problems.  One answer may be to try to encourage more persons to volunteer their assistance after natural disasters because if this had been a hurricane or earthquake we would have been completely overwhelmed.  For instance posting police or soldiers at the Harbour View bridge would have prevented persons from trying to cross the river at the risk of their lives.  In addition more public education is needed about the dangers associated with heavy rains and winds.

Generally I think that the response of the government has been good but there are still areas that require improvement.