The  House That Moved

Amazing what they can do to move a house these days. 

Trucks that can perform amazing tasks to straddle and dodge obstacles on the way to a new outlook.

So the house that was moved from danger  (too late really) was sitting on the truck one day and in the middle of the night I heard the quiet but fast move down the road with flashing lights and pilot vehicles and attendants paving the way for a safe trip.

The property that the house was moved from was deemed necessary to acquire for future flood control.

It's like a kneejerk reaction. Something has to be seen to be done or otherwise there will be another catastrophe .

The stream next to the property has been quietly flowing for years and years .There was a stopbank present along the adjoining stretch but the stream was spring fed.

The spring was miles away and the resulting flow meandered through many properties before reaching a junction with the main river system where it discharged near a double channel that took overflow from the main river.

I had seen this stream at times of very high rainfall and runoff pushed it up a little but it was hard to notice.

I had observed the level well up the stopbank in one rain event but it never looked like breaching.

The only reason it breached during Gabrielle was because the main river had multiple breaches up steam and that combined with what was more like a dam burst in another valley to deliver us a double whammy.

The solution was to attend to upstream issues first.

Disrupting peoples lives and spending ratepayers and taxpayers money on quick fix solutions was a poor decision.

The other issue is reoccurrence.

 I guess modelling suggests we will see the same scenario repeated in the future.

I would speculate that we will not.

The exact same scenario will not be repeated and there other areas that I can see that are much more vulnerable  and still exposed to future events.

Two areas in particular are open to huge destruction and possible loss of life.

Strange that the reaction is to penalise those who have already been penalised.