I live in Townsville; North Queensland, Australia. You may or may not know but this regional town of roughly 180,000 people was hit with the worst flooding this city has ever seen. To put it in perspective, Townsville was hit with the same amount of rain that Melbourne receives in three years - in 10 days! 

I was extremely fortunate; where I live is on higher ground. And although the river I live close to did break its banks and make it's way onto our streets, it never went further than people's driveways. 

So let's start from the beginning. 

Townsville finally got rain on Australia Day, 26 January. I remember being at my friends house dancing in the street loving the rain - little did I know a week later I wish it would be over. Townsville has been in a drought for the past few years. Our dam, which is our main water supply, got down to 16% but with a nice decent rain last year in 2018 it got up to 90% and slowly was falling again.

So of course when it started raining Townsville rejoiced, finally our normal rain season was back and maybe this was a sign our water problems would be over for now. On Wednesday 30 January I got the message that the Townsville Local Disaster Management Group (TLDMG) had moved to Stand Up - this is serious business. By this time some suburbs had already experienced major flash flooding - people had shipping containers, cars and houses floating past them. We thought this would be the worst of it.

On the Thursday I got called in to work at the Disaster Centre, and from that point on I pretty much lived there for next 11 days. I worked with a small team, but majority of us worked 14 hour days to send critical information to the community.

It kept raining, and the dam kept filling. On the Friday I told a colleague I'll pick her up to take her to work at the Disaster Centre. I was slightly terrified when I left my house and couldn't even see a few metres in front of my car due to the severe amount of rain falling. I turned into my friends area and immediately wish I hadn't - water all over the road. Not a small amount either. I could feel my car wanting to resist, water was spraying up past my car and it was a really bad decision on my part. I remember stopping in the middle of her street, as it had the least amount of water being the highest point, and calling her to run into the street and get in my car. The water was deep, and I had to watch her step through the flooding outside her house which was insane. It's okay though, we both made it to work safely.

By Saturday the rain still hadn't stopped. The dam was still filling and by this point I think it was at 200% (don't quote me on that, I could be wrong, and can't be bothered to get technical right now) but pretty much the dam was well and truly over capacity. The dam gates were already open, they actually opened when the dam hit 100% on January 30. 

Sunday was the worst day. I remember sitting there working and watching the TLDMG as they finished a meeting. Everyone suddenly looked more serious, some looked scared. In the hours that followed we were told the dam just had 300mm rain fall over it, and the dam gates would have to be opened fully - this meant flooding a heap of suburbs. I remember waiting for the maps of the impacted suburbs to come out and I prayed I didn't see my street on the list, thankfully it wasn't. But I saw friends houses on it, people who were at the centre had their houses on the map and at about 6.30pm/7pm we were told to leave the centre now or you might be stuck here for night, possibly the whole next day. So I up and left. I worked from home and looked at social media in shock of what I was seeing. So many people didn't evacuate their houses and now needed saving - stranded with water levels rising. I didn't sleep much that night.

I made it back to the centre the following morning, at about 6.30am. Thankfully the flooding didn't impact the roads I needed to take. When I arrived it was crazy. People had slept there, beds were on the ground, some people still asleep under desks and it was still raining. I just went back to work, put my head down and helped where I could.

The week that followed was a blur, we were all on auto pilot, just getting done what needed to get done. I figured out on top of my normal work hours, which is 37 hours a week, I did an extra 66 hours in overtime in 10 days. No wonder why when I finally did get home and was given a day off I was so exhausted and just wanted to sleep, which I did sleep -  a lot.

The team I worked with were absolutely amazing. We all got to know each other on a whole new level. We cried together, laughed together and went to hell and back together. We also tried our damn hardest to keep the community informed and I think we did a pretty good job.

I'm devastated for the people who lost their house, their personal belongings and some their cars. I can't even comprehend what that would be like. Businesses are closed, some to never re-open. Schools were closed for the longest time, with one not opening until around May it received that much damage. 

It's so surreal because for me I've only seen photos and videos on tv or social media. I don't live in the affected areas and I haven't driven through them as they are swarmed with services helping to clean up. 

One thing that has been amazing to see is the community working together. I was still working at the Disaster Centre but on the Monday (or Tuesday) after the dam gates were fully opened there was a full boat operation in some of the suburbs. Anyone with a boat turned up to a make shift boat ramp, normally a main road but it was so under water it looked like an ocean, and people started rescuing others still in their homes, collecting people's belongings and saving pets. 

Once the clean up begun people just turned up in the suburbs ready to clean, strangers helping strangers. People walked around handing out bottles of water for free, restaurants were cooking up food and giving it to everyone working - it was such a nice thing to see everyone helping each other.

Now you might be wondering why I'm writing this all in this blog. Truth be told I want to remember what happened and there is no better place than here. Some people won't read all this but at least in years to come I can look back at what happened.

So I'm going to stop typing for now. Below I've found a bunch of videos and photos online (credit given below) of the rain event, so you can get an idea of what it was actually like.