This weekend, Cairns had a bit of rain. We had the monsoon trough come down through us, heading south. We had a low to the east. We had the remnants of TC Charlotte to the west, moving towards us. Couple that with a 3.4m king tide at 10am, and things got a bit damp.
Sunday night it really kicked off, and poured down all night. When we woke up Monday morning, there was water everywhere. Our back garden was completely underwater, and we had rivers flowing down the yard.
The rain had started to ease at our place, so we headed in to work in the Subaru. However, we only got about half way before turning around, heading home, and getting the 4WD. What changed our mind:
And it was a good thing to. There was water everywhere, and it kept coming down heavily throughout the whole day. Roads were cut, and houses and businesses were flooded. On our way to work we saw a lot of sidestreets with parked cars up to their windows in flood waters.
Cairns is set up to drain really well, with large flood drains throughout the city. However, with the king tide, the water from the bay was actually flooding back into the drain system. So a lot of the drains had broken their banks, and were across roads and bridges.
Our new office (about a year old now) has always leaked pretty badly, and this time was no exception. We had water in : the boardroom; an interview room; the kitchen; the gents; two solicitor's offices. Because there was no way for the plumber to fix it during the heavy downpours, we simply had to move as much furniture away from the water soaked carpet as possible, and then call in the bloke with the big sucker truck to come and suck as much out as possible during the lighter rain periods. Of course, they'd just flood again as soon as the rain got heavier, but by the end of the day the plumber had managed to stop the leaks in 3 of the rooms. The sucker-truck fellow left us with a bunch of big heater fans and a couple of industrial-sized de-humidifiers to leave running in the rooms, to try to get as much moisture out of the carpet and walls as possible.
We fared pretty good at home. We had some water come into the office, which I'm not happy about, but it wasn't anything that a couple of towels couldn't soak up. I pulled up the vinyl floor and left the fan on it overnight, and it seems to have cleared up. But we should probably get it looked at once we get back.
Later Monday night, however, we got a phone call from friends of ours. Their brand new, 4 week old house, had flooded the downstairs room. They had been cleaning it out, but had run into some problems, and needed a hand. They also wanted to go and get some sandbags, but the SES were advising that there was still a lot of roads cut by water, so if you wanted to come and pick up any bags, you would need a 4WD (which we had, but they didn't).
So after a couple of hours mopping, brooming and towling up water, we came to the conclusion that the water hadn't entered through the sliding doors to the backyard as they had originally thought. The house is on a slope, and the downstairs room is cut into the earth a bit on the high side. It turns out the builder had excavated to lay the slab and build the block wall, but then just back-filled it with uncompacted dirt. Water had drained from the road down under the house, until it hit the soft dirt and the wall. The waterproof tar-like barrier on the block wall had failed, and the water had been seeping through the wall into the house. That's why, after clearing the water for 3hrs, there was just as much of it still there as when we started - it was still coming through.
So around that time we gave up. Their playstation and DVD/surround sound system were sitting on the floor when the water came in, and had thrown their electrical safety switch. So after we made sure that everything was safe, we turned the RCD back on, and they had power again. But the electronics will be ruined. Luckily the 50" plasma tv had been sitting on a small table.
The builder came around the following day (Tuesday) and confirmed that the waterproof barrier had failed, and that he hadn't put any drainage at the bottom of the block wall before backfilling it. He's going to excavate it out and fix it, apparently. However, the real kicker is that he doesn't have any insurance, so they can't claim the cost of the broken electrical stuff, and the water soaked couches, and the ruined bookcases, and so forth. Their insurance won't cover them because it's a building defect, and thus covered under the builder's insurance. So they're going to be considerably out of pocket over the whole affair, even if the builder does fix it all for free.
Not a nice way to start your life in your new dream home!
To give you an idea of just how much water we got, when we got home on the Monday afternoon, our rain gauge was overflowing. We took 300mm out of it, but goodness knows how much was lost. When we checked it again at our usual time on Tuesday morning, there was another 100mm in it, just from overnight. That's a lot of rain.
The rain's gone away now, but they're predicting that the monsoon trough will come back on Saturday, and we'll get a lot more rain then. Which is nice - it's not as if we need the airport to be open on Saturday or anything...
