Canadians in Brisbane watch as flood waters drown city

Canadian expatriates living in Brisbane, Australia, remain on edge over massive flooding that has inundated much of the country’s third-largest city, killing at least 16 people and leaving more than 50 missing.

The Brisbane and Bremer rivers, which snake through the cosmopolitan city of about two million, have risen steadily this past week as heavy rains exacerbated floods that now cover a swath of the state of Queensland the size of France and Germany, combined.

As of Wednesday, authorities had to cut off power to more than 100,000 homes in the Brisbane area, a preventive measure to cope with the river’s expected cresting. Thousands of residents have been forced to flee their homes in outlying suburbs to evacuation shelters as the city’s core braces for the worst flooding in more than 30 years. Hundreds more could follow suit in the coming days.

For Donna Vitan, a web page designer from Toronto who has been blogging her adventures around Australia with her boyfriend Jason Rundell since April, the flood will be one of the more memorable moments from a yearlong working vacation.

Vitan and Rundell have been renting an apartment in the heart of Brisbane’s Central Business District, where sandbags and police tape now line streets more used to sunscreen-splattered tourists and office workers.

Vitan said residents in her area have been placed under an evacuation alert as the district has been declared a disaster zone. She and Rundell prepared a kit of essentials Tuesday night and made plans with friends living in drier areas should they be forced to leave.

"We’re mostly trying to stay calm and follow up with the news for emergency purposes," she said. With the peak still a day away, however, Vitan said there are still plenty of people milling about downtown and the nearby botanical gardens, watching the raging waters rush by.

"So weird to see people walking around like it’s a beautiful weekend stroll, even families with children and strollers," she said. "It’s very strange indeed."

Despite the apprehension, Vitan said all they can really do is wait.

"Jason and I have spoken to our property manager and he’s pretty calm about the situation, which makes me feel a bit better – considering he’s a floor below us," she said.

City officials have estimated that nearly 30,000 homes and 3,500 businesses will be damaged by the flood this week, particularly those in the low-lying suburbs.

Bob Bernard, an architect originally from Kelowna, B.C., who’s lived in the Queensland capital for the last 16 years, had just returned Wednesday afternoon from sandbagging a friend’s restaurant in the Fortitude Valley neighbourhood adjacent to the city’s downtown.

"It’s scary to see the power of the river," said Bernard via a message on Facebook. "I’ve experienced cyclones at 160 km/h winds up in Darwin and now water like I’ve never seen water before."

While his home is far enough away from the Brisbane River to remain safe, Bernard said his friend expected the restaurant to be flooded by within days.

"Brisbane is going under."

Members of the Queensland Canadian Club, a meeting place in Brisbane for Canadians in need of some good hockey talk or the latest gossip out of Ottawa, have been offering up their homes to other expats displaced by the flood.

One member, Ottawa native David Varga, said the city he’s called home for the last year has been handling the crisis with traditional Australian aplomb.

"Like every natural disaster, many people come out to offer their help," he said in an email. "People who have been in the worst areas are trying to remain upbeat but others are very emotional."

"Images that you are getting may be harrowing but as far as being tough to imagine in a place like Australia, well, this country has gone through droughts, cyclones and floods in the past," wrote Varga, who lived in Sydney for 22 years before moving to Brisbane. "So this is not new to this rugged country."

Erin Burchill, president of the Queensland Canadian Club said she went to Cairns, about 1,800 kilometres north of Brisbane for Christmas and is "trapped" there.

"We drove up her for Christmas and just barely got through the front of the floods as they worked their way down the coast. My husband Blair had to fly home to get back to work and pretty much flew into the eve of Armageddon on Tuesday," Burchill said via email Wednesday morning.

"It has been just terrible. Toowoomba’s inland tsunami on Tuesday was devastating. People are dying, I can’t get my head around it. So, so tragic," she told Postmedia News.