Brisbane homes flooded as ‘rain bomb’ continues to threaten lives in south-east Queensland

More than 1,400 Brisbane households are thought to have been flooded as Queensland authorities warn of the continuing threat posed by a “rain bomb” over the state’s south-east.

The town of Gympie recorded its highest flood level in more than a century, with more than 500 households and 130 businesses affected.

The Brisbane River peaked in the city at 3.1 metres on Sunday morning – below the 4.46m recorded during the 2011 floods. But the city’s lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, warned this was a very different weather event.

“This is a unique event, there is no doubt about that,” Schrinner told reporters.

“In 2011 we saw the rain had stopped while the river continued to rise. Right now, we’re seeing rain bucketing down. We have a rain bomb above south-east Queensland and it continues to come down.”

Six people have died in Queensland over the past few days with a search continuing for a seventh person missing in Brisbane…READ ON

United Nation warns the planet is facing a ‘global wildfire crisis’

Dozens of leading scientists around the world are warning of a “global wildfire crisis” over the coming decades as a warming planet ramps up the chance of increasingly devastating infernos.

“Even with the most ambitious efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will still experience a dramatic increase in the frequency of extreme fire conditions”

 Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires

In a landmark rapid response report published this week through the United Nations Environment Programme, over 50 experts from six continents warned, “the heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes, while more extreme weather means stronger, hotter, drier winds to fan the flames.”

By the end of the century, the chance of a repeat of the huge Arctic fires that consumed Siberia in 2020 or Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-2020 will climb on any given year by between 31 and 57 per cent, the report found.

“It’s very rare for people to come together on a report like this,” said Amy Cardinal Christianson, a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service and one of three Canadian authors…READ ON