Live From The Brisbane 'HOLY SHIT IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US' Flood Zone

That's terrible, my best wishes go out for you, Mess.

I think your superintendent should confiscate the televisions belonging to the complainers, Mess.

Seriously, fuck those guys.

"hurr durr, you're working around the clock so I don't have my stuff water damaged and so on. WHY CAN'T I WATCH TV??????"

Ok loss of power is bad but, isn't, say, food in the fridge a bit more important?
Man.

Good luck and well done on all the hard work.

Be a shame that the TVs should find themselves on the roof perched on the edge to precariously..................................................

Yes, and that my water cannons are stuck on "Hydro Pump".....

And that I stole every battery, teaspoon and door handle in their apartments.

Right. It's 0830, so it's time for another update.

First of all, thank you all very much for your words of support and encouragement. It means quite a lot to be able to read through them, and they are very much appreciated.

Slept through until 0700, at which point I got the call that we needed to move the pumps again. Knew this was coming, as they were both sucking air last night. So we repositioned the trailer with the generators deeper into the water. We also moved the pumps deeper into the garage itself. Turns out it gets deeper; a lot deeper. Where I was normally having to go in just past my ankles to reach the generators, I'm now back in it up to my waist. To make matters more entertaining, one of the hoses had begun to leak.

The kicker with hoses under pressure is that you need to really bind them when they're operating, so you can see if you've got the leak. Which means I had to wrap the duct tape around the hose as it was pumping the water out. Got sprayed in the face a number of times, so had to hold my breath, which made things even more exciting. I haven't had this much exercise since I went to Europe, so it's ben invigorating in that sense that I've burned off a lot of energy. However, the supermarket down the road is underwater still, so that complicates things a little bit.

The rest of Brisbane is still a helluva mess. Fortunately, the true blue Aussie spirit's coming through, and the 'Mud Army' of volunteers is in full swing clearing the roads and streets of mud. You've got to get it away while it's still wet, because if it dries it hardens and smells rank. The real irony of it is that this is the time where we need a dose of decent rain, to wash away the residue.

Anyways, I'd best head down to speak to the superintendent and find out how the power's going. Catch you all later

Good luck, Mess. You seem pretty resolute throughout all this, so hang in there!

Don't give up, Mess.

We're all here for you.

Hopefully, our presence on the forum will give you at least two more days before you go insane.

You've done an awesome job so far Messer
Good luck

1230, update time. And this is gonna be a good one for all you Cracked.com readers out there.

So what do we know about Australia? We know that it's an island. We know that their cricket team can't bat their way out of a soggy paper bag. But the key thing that we know is that the wildlife exists for only one reason; to destroy us. Over half of the Top Ten Most Deadliest Snakes are found here, the spiders are the size of dinner plates, and the platypus is, in the words of Cracked, 'Mother Nature's way of saying, "I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you!"

So you can imagine my joy that there's something flipping about in the underground carpark, which is still flooded up to my knees.

It turns out that no one stepped up to replace me in refilling the pumps. So I wandered in again (wearing gumboots this time, which promptly filled with water) with a colleague who had uneasily been drafted by me to help out. Suddenly, as we reached the trailer, his head snapped around. "There's something in the water over there." I turned in time to see a reptillian tail as long as my forearm snap across the water and vanish in a series of ripples. The guy moved closer to the trailer. I just shook my head and kept on sloshing.

Now, the tail was either of three things; lizard, carpet python, or red-bellied snake. The lizards are the Godzilla-like ones, from the beginning of the movie starring Matthew Broderick and Jean Russo (I think it's Russo. He was also in 'Mission: Impossible', and 'Ronin' as the grizzled Frenchman who's gruff and handy with knives). Now those buggers can be big; as long as my leg. Carpet pythons are a pain in the ass, but they're not poisonous. They like hugs, and are normally found either hiding in attics or wrapped around axles. Red-Bellies are a cause for concern; they are poisonous, and can get a bit bitey.

But all of these are reptiles, and the simple fact is this; I'm a helluva lot bigger than them. Which means, and I said this to my comrade, that the moment we're heading into the water, they're heading for the far side. Smaller reptiles here tend to be nonconfrontational, and will go in the opposite direction as soon as they detect you. Except for taipans. Taipans will look you up and down, and say "bring it on". But they live further up north. It could be on holiday though.

Nevertheless, I turned to my comrade, and in an effort to lighten the mood, put on my best Steve Irwin 'Crocodile Hunter' accent. "It's probably one of the deadly Brisbane River Dragons! Now, these beauties will chew your toes off in a matter of minutes, so wotchit! Crikey!" Cue the nervous laughter. I don't think he'll be back at 1330.

Aside from that, all is proceeding. I unfortunately took a bit of a spill at the 0700 refuel, and have popped two Panadol to deal with that. Power's back on to the complex, so people have hot water and TV reception. However, one idiot decided to ignore instructions and fired up their Air Conditioning, which draws the air from the underground garage. Specifically, from an area that's still underwater. So, that's screwed that up nicely. I've gone in and flicked the isolation switches, so they can sweat up there. Just got slighty chewed out by two residents that I passed on my way to the shops to get an ice-cream ("Oh? Not working today, are you?") At which point I mentioned to them that they now had hot water, power, and that I was continuing to fuel the generators every two hours, even though I've now got at least one reptillian companion down there somewhere.

So, I'd best go refuel the pumps. I'll happily take name suggestions for whatever's swimming about in the underground carpark, and catch y'all later.

Ranger. Park Ranger.

A DAISY OWL COMIC?

ON OUR THREAD?!

Oh wait, that's the main reason we met and stuff...

To tell you the truth, the forum has evolved so far as to make Daisy Owl entirely unnecessary. ¬_¬

It's been almost a year since the last comic was released.

A Brisbane River Dragon? Oh no! []

Well I just posted that to show the reason why Mess should name his temporary mate Park Ranger.

Messernacht wrote:Just got slighty chewed out by two residents that I passed on my way to the shops to get an ice-cream ("Oh? Not working today, are you?") At which point I mentioned to them that they now had hot water, power, and that I was continuing to fuel the generators every two hours, even though I've now got at least one reptillian companion down there somewhere.

You should've grabbed them and dragged them down to the generators and made them stay there.
Fuckers.

Right, it's 1040 on Monday morning, so time for another update.

When I last left you all, we'd relocated the pumps for more effective action, and I was looking about to see where the wildlife had gotten to.

Well, we kept the generators churning over, and the pumps kept on sucking away the water. However, we soon hit our next major pothole; the water level itself. We soon found that the level was dropping at a tremendous rate, which meant that the pumps were beginning to suck in air. For the pump running off the electrical generator, this was no problem. But the dedicated pump generator would suck in a slug of air and kick about as the slug went through. Sometimes, the hit would be enough to slosh the fuel around and the engine would die. So, we whipped the top off one of the stormwater drains in the floor of the carpark and booted the dedicated pump down there. Two more refuels later, and at 2100 Saturday night, the pump successfully drained the last of the water from the garage. 43 hours that took us, and I can personally vouch that it's so much easier refuelling those things with the power back on. As we shut down the pump for at 8pm, I was told to take a break for the first time since the walkway floated away.

So I promptly got sick. Wasn't well through all of Sunday. Don't know what it was; something from the water, something from the fumes of hanging around the generators, just being able to finally stop, whatever. Fortunately, it was only a 24 hour-thing, which meant that this morning (Monday) I'm feeling better. Managed to drag myself out of bed for an hour on Sunday afternoon though for a 'Thank You' BBQ that the superintendent of the complex put on for all of us who'd put in the effort. Both my Dad and I were singled out as having really thrown ourselves into the task, which was nice. In addition, one of the people I was working with, on the Saturday night once we stopped, told me to sent a resume that he'll forward on to a International Security consulting firm down south. So that's a plus.

Monday morning, I got up, got back into my gear, and went to carry out the last task on my list; the lift wells. Through some genius, the lift-wells hadn't drained. So the first one we cracked open, the water was lapping at the door. So, we biffed the pump down into it, and left 'er rip. You could literally see the water level drop. We've got all three done, and have been told that's it until the lift people can have a look.

Sadly, people in the complex continue to be real pratts. As Dad and I were rolling up the hoses, some shined-up, hair slicked back legal/business type strolled over and pushed the button for the lift. Dad said that he wasn't sure whether the lifts were working. The guy looked down at us, covered in muck and water, and sneered that his lift had been working since Wednesday. Then, without a word of greetings or thanks, he got into the lift and went. I'm surprised that neither of us decked the guy. Still, it's better than an apartment complex down the road, where as soon as the water reached it, the superintendents upped and left, without letting the residents know or anything. Truly disgusting, which makes me glad that here, the pricks have been by far the minority.

The clean-up on the streets continues. There's a steady procession of dump-trucks moving past my window, and the sky is still buzzing with the occasional helicopter. The main problem now is spectators; families with kids coming to look at the river and the mud, boy-racers and teenagers in their lowered cars coming to show off, and teenage girls and girls in their 20s coming to watch the men working with their shirts off and drool. We had the cops directing traffic at each end of the road, turning people coming down to watch away. It saddens me, to hear stories such as that. There are suburbs here that were completely untouched, so these people treat the situation as if it's a spectacle. One of the people I used to work with said that she really wished she was here right now, as it sounds 'awesome'. I wish these people had been here to watch the water come up, wondering exactly how high it was going to get. We got off lucky here, but people have lost their homes and some have lost their lives. And the clean-up has only just begun.

All things aside though, things are starting to improve. They're not back to normal yet, and probably won't be for weeks, or even months. They say that the rebuild effort will be the biggest since the end of the Second World War, and I believe it. But they'll do it. As for the complex my parents live at, I've been told that I've earned my keep, which is nice. So I can now look at what has been five very hectic days, and realise that now I've got to get back to sending away job applications. Ah well.

So I say again, thank you all very much for your comments and best wishes. It's been great to log in and see all the replies, which have really made me smile. So for that, I say Cheers.

Catch y'all later.

Well congratulations, Messer! You're now officially on the hero list. :-D

This is probably a whole chapter at least in your published memoirs. []

Great job, Mess! You're now the king of pumps! ALL HAIL KING MESSERNACHT!