So today was another day in the clean up after the Brisbane floods. Again I was out at Chelmer helping the same friend and again I had to park my car out of the residents area and walk in to the suburb to clean. This time the police and army had stepped up the road blocks and I had to walk 40 minutes to get to the house, across two suburbs. It wasn’t so bad as it gave me a chance to do some more photojournalism before arriving to lift stuff and sort through piles of thrown out rubbish to salvage anything that had been accidentally thrown out.

The presence of volunteers was enormous with special Brisbane City Council buses dropping packed loads of people into marshaling areas within the suburb.

The army were again in force, today working in teams to systematically pick up the piles of damaged belongings outside of people’s home.

Most residents were in cleaning or even rebuilding stages due to the massive hordes of helpers they had yeterday. Ron [right], a Corinda resident, mentioned he had 16 volunteers at his home on Saturday and was spending Sunday with his two mates rebuilding the walls that he cut out due to water damage. When bending down to take this photo, looking left to right you could see in to every corner of the house. Ron was grateful for me to come into his home to take this photo. I promised to return with a print in the next few days.

A school in Chelmer was also hit in the floods and they had a massive onslaught of helpers to fix the grounds ready for the new school year to start in the next week or so. I didn’t get a shot but the whole tennis court was stacked with chairs and a team of volunteers were hosing them all down to get rid of mud.

This is only another short entry with only a handful of photos.

A few people are leaving feedback both on my blog and on facebook about how chilling thee photos are. If these photos affect you, remember its real. It’s happening out there so do your part to help the people whose lives I have captured within these photos by donating here:

www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Also the word is on the street (from those experienced in natural disaster recovery and those that experienced the last floods) that volunteer numbers will surely drop off as media coverage already has. So please, please keep the momentum going with volunteer registration. It is not all about the heavy lifting stuff, but also the painful process of cleaning every surface and object that is rescuable. Register here:

www.volunteeringqld.org.au/home/