Noneofyourbusiness wrote on Feb 21^st, 2015 at 6:24pm:


I doubt the people who have lost their homes , or suffered damage and trauma think it was a fizzer.

And the house is still standing.

Hello all my loyal fans. UnSub here. Well, what a week it was -- let alone, more than for the cyclone. Thursday night/Friday morning week, I last spoke to you. Hope you enjoyed the peace. I had power out until Thursday afternoon... and then no internet until tonight. Cooking without power became a matter of having cold dinners the first night. In fact, I couldn't remember much of what I did for the first night after the cyclone -- considering that I have felt dehydrated and heat stroked from standing in line for ice a few days later.

My first cooked meal came from the aid of my parents, who only live 2km away from me. We got the BBQ downstairs to cook up some crumbed steaks before they went off. Mum got the gas cooker upstairs to cook up some vegetables. Basically, dinner was a BBQ event, and we basically made use of candles and battery powered lights to keep us out of the dark. Our various radios where our only form of communication, save for the occasion mobile phone to friends. Some network problems did exist the first night.

The first order of business for me was to get the food that I had in my fridge (what little I had) to be moved to my freezer. My freezer became my fridge. Luckily for me, I had about 6 bottles of frozen water in the freezer, and that acted as my ice for the first few days. My freezer had built up frost and was in severe need of defrosting. But luckily, I didn't do a defrost in the past month, or I would have lost a few bottles of milk that I had overstocked the fortnight before. Obviously, my frozen milk had also acted as my ice blocks as well. So, it meant that my freezer could stay cold until day 3, where I had to go find ice around town.

The Rocky Ice was the only place I could get ice. However, they had to get Mackay, and Emerald to truck in some ice, since Rocky Ice was overwhelmed. I recall waiting in line in 36 degree heat for up to 2 hours for ice, because I was dumb enough to believe that a van of ice was only 15 minutes away for delivery. Only the baulking thunderstorm cloud cover was what gave us relief from the heat. Had some nice little chats to people in line, though.

Oh, it took until about the second night before people started cranking up their generators. Even retiring to bed at midnight, some aahh soles decided to keep their generators going. Perhaps they couldn't sleep without some airconditioning cranked, the poor diddums, and that is why they kept their generators going. But I guess that because people had been going around stealing generators (not only from traffic lights, but also from homes) that it's best to know that you can hear it and sleep. Though I wish that people would just let the fridges go off for 8 hours, just to keep noise to a minimum. The council decided to collect their traffic light generators at midnight, since they figure few people would be using the roads then.

No power at home. No power at work. I had my day off on the Thursday, and then an enforced day off from work because of the cyclone, and subsequent power and water outages. Luckily, I had enough running water to keep me cool. Four showers a day (2 scrub up ones + 2 rinses to keep cool) was enough to stay sane. I suppose these ceiling fans aren't missed until they are not working.

Lighting at night was just a matter of lighting a few candles, and then a few citronella candles to keep the bugs away. I went through my first 40 citronella tea lights in 5 days, and started on the second packet when the power was restored. Now I just use them to keep the mozzies away from the windows that can't be shut. My mozzie zappers are used 3 a night, at different sections of the house. No mozzie problem so far.

The cyclone itself was quite eerie. I woke up that Friday morning to the wind blowing up a gale. It was breezy the night before, but the wind had picked up by mid morning. Like people had noted, I was without power by 10am. All I could do was watch as the winds made twigs of the trees in the front yard. I watched both front and back yard at even attention. I thought that my big trees were going to survive the winds. Sometimes, the wind gusts would pick up and send the trees near horizontal. My attention to the backyard was prolonged, as I watched an adjacent neighbour getting his corrugated roof blown off. It managed to stay on for most part, but it was basically flapping in the wind loosely. Then when I went back to the front, I missed seeing the tree being snapped in two at one of the larger trunks. Must have been quite a wind gust to have done that.

The eye of the storm was something. My neighbours had been sheltering in their shed (cyclone proof). My other neighbours sheltered in their house. But we were all out and about when the eye crossed over. We had a river of water going down our street, and we basically all had to go out to our section of the street to collect fallen branches being washed away. Some aahh souls decided to take their cars out for a spin. It would have been somewhat funny to have seen them strand their cars and be caught on the flip side of the cyclone, only 30 minutes later. Others tried to look like big heros and drive their Patrols around to survey damage. I had even heard the sound of a chainsaw down the road trying to cut away branches.

My walk down the road took twice as long (or longer) than it usually takes, because I was barefoot and wading through knee high water. Obviously, the storm water drains were overwhelmed with water. The walk back took longer than I liked, because we were getting ready for the flip side of the cyclone. I found that the only damage to the place was a few broken branches, and my louvers had been knocked in at the downstairs back. Upstairs, the water had rinsed its way passed the closed windows. so, leaving them open was not going to make much difference. I didn't use the bench or stove until recently. So, I was cleaning over the week.

I was annoyed when getting supplies and surveying the damage, I saw the number of overgrown trees that had fallen onto powerlines. People have already mentioned this, but why wasn't the council out lopping trees to prevent the exacerbated power outages. They could have saved a lot of trouble for people, if they went and cut some overgrown trees in certain areas. Wouldn't have stopped the black out. But, I would have seen some power here a few days earlier, I reckon.

Anyway, work was overwhelmed with customers looking for a meal cooked. McDonalds had a few stores opened around town, but it wasn't enough to divert excessive customers (can I say that?) away from us. Glad to see our competition still closed, though. Tonight was the first time I could work at normal pace, since the power was coming back around town. Everything back to normal within 2 weeks, I assume. The house is still standing.

As a consequence of the cyclone, we now have to endure water problems as a result of the treatment plants being inundated with debris from the falling trees. We have had to endure a week of brownish (but drinkable, according to the mayor) water to wash ourselves and our clothes. I have encouraged friends to start hosing the yard, because I think the water treatment plants need to rid the dirty water quickly for us to get back to having clean water.

So glad that I bought a water filter 4 years ago.