Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but in Australia it is really big news and really devastating at that. Many people think I'm joking or totally disbelieve me when I say Summer is Australia's wet season. The bottom half of Queensland has been affected greatly by floods and endless rain basically since Christmas time only now its gotten much worse. 15 people have been found dead over 90 people are missing, homes and peoples personal belongings totally destroyed even people's pets have drowned. Not only that there is no fresh food or water so stuff is having to be flown in as all roads are blocked. Toowoomba was hit the hardest as its the place with the 15 deaths, more are expected to be found which is quite shocking.

Also the damage is horrifying especially after seeing some of the images on TV and several people have been trapped in their cars while being taken away by powerful torrents of water. It's absolute madness.

This kind of stuff really gets me angry, really angry, yet there is nothing we can really do about. I really feel for everyone involved in these floods. I hope it ends for them soon.

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStor ... 63908.html

My heart goes out this little hero who put his younger brother's life first in serious danger, he was only 13 years old.

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStor ... 63725.html

I'm sorry to hear about that.

Over here, the state (not the city) of Rio de Janeiro has also experienced some devastating mudslides and landslides due to floods and heavy rains. Supposedly more than 250 people have already lost their lives. There was also some light flooding in São Paulo as well (a lady I know at church supposedly lost everything (or good portion of her worldy goods) due to heavy rains and flooding this week.

My heart goes out to all those who have lost their possessions and most important of all..their lives..in these horrible occurrences. That young boy was a real hero protecting his brother like that. I almost cried looking at his picture...he was so young. May he rest in peace.

Unfortunately the body count rises everyday. There are almost 500 dead in Rio. The saddest thing about that is almost every year there is a tragedy like that, with more than 100 dead and the authorities don´t do anything to prevent the next year´s tragedy...

Wow, that's horrible. Floods are a really dangerous force of nature. We're lucky to not get many here where I live, and never anything on that level. I really feel for all the people that are losing loved ones and homes in these situations.

tilinelson2 wrote:the authorities don´t do anything to prevent the next year´s tragedy...

Is there anything that they could do? I don't know anything about the situation there, but it seems to me that massive flooding on that scale would be very difficult to prevent.

Yeah, it is almost impossible to prevent the floods, but they could do something to prevent the landslides, which are the main cause of deaths in that region. Every year there are massive landslides caused by rain erosion and they result in hundreds of dead people. The authorities could do something either to prevent the landslides or to remove people from risky locations, preventing their deaths.

I think they should start asking geographers and geologists (I call them geo's for short) for counsel about where to build houses and then...well...you know...actually FOLLOW THEIR ADVICE. I think most geo's know from the outset that building houses of a certain quality in certain places is more or less a ticking time bomb. If the government actually collaborated with them, you could probably avoid some of this.

A lot of the mudslides could be prevented by having simple drainage ditches to channel water into creeks and rivers, thus eliminating significant land saturation and, hopefully, preventing any chance of future large scale land slides.

Those all sounds like good ideas. Directing the water away from danger zones, and not even putting residences near those to start with, would be a big step toward reducing the impact of all that rain. Now if only the local governments would do it...