"Save my brother first"

I've said many times before when I've posted about major events that they're really a jigsaw of many small, individual, personal stories.

A tragic example is one such individual story that's part of the jigsaw of the Queensland floods event. The story of a true hero, only thirteen years old, and passers-by who risked their own lives trying to save strangers.

Warren McErlean watched the water on a street gauge in Toowoomba rise twenty centimetres in ten seconds as the inland 'tsunami' hit the town.

He saw a car with a family in it, thirteen year old Jordon Rice, his ten year old brother Blake and mother Donna, with water up to the number plate.

Warren tried to get to the car but by the time he'd walked twenty metres towards it the water was over its bonnet.

He roped himself to a pole and again tried to reach the car but was washed away. Another passer-by, known only as Chris, pulled him out, tied himself to the pole and managed to get to the car.

He grabbed Jordan, but the boy insisted that he save his younger brother first. Blake was carried to safety.

Chris went back to the car where he grabbed Jordan's hand but the rope snapped, the car flipped over and Jordan and Donna were swept away.


Jordan Rice. Hero.
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Warren was interviewed on Radio 2UE, and you can listen to his account of what happened here.

The spin on food hygiene

It's all good news on the food outlet hygiene front if you look at the way the story today is presented.

Gulf News headlines the story: "Hygiene standards improve in food establishments".

The first para tells us that "food establishments in Dubai saw a qualitative improvement in their standards of hygiene last year".

Later it tells us that "the amount of fines fell by 50%" and that "the year 2010 saw saw a significant reduction in the number of violations".

All true according to the report issued by Dubai Municipality.

But if you look at the figures there's another way the story could have been slanted, equally accurate.

There were in 2010 a total of 7,778 violations. While that's better than the 14,188 the previous year it's still a long way from acceptable in my opinion.

Nearly 8,000 hygiene violations by food outlets detected...how many of us does that put at risk?

In fact it's about 20% of the inspections carried out, and that is surely far too high.

We're going in the right direction but there's still a huge amount to be done, not least of which is education in hygiene for those involved in handling our food.

The Gulf News story is here.

Land of extremes

This time of year I'm usually posting about bushfires causing death and destruction in Australia.

We do indeed have fires, in the west. Not far from Perth a deliberately lit fire has destroyed a dozen homes:


Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

There's a large area burnt out but fortunately no casualties reported.

The animals won't be as lucky, although people do their best to rescue them:

Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

But this 'fire season' the big news is the flood disaster hitting Queensland.

The news an hour ago was that thirteen people are dead and another forty three are missing...and the worst of the flood is yet to come.

Towns have been destroyed by flash flooding, with 'tsunamis' of six to eight metres coming out of nowhere and catching people by surprise.

One third of Ipswich, a suburb of Brisbane, is under water. Brisbane itself, our third largest city, is on high alert with many suburbs already flooded and mass evacuations from the city centre. The river runs through the centre of the city and is due to peak at 4am Brisbane time. Fortunately the predicted 5.4 metre peak has been revised to 5.2 metres. It's still a hell of a lot of water - measure it!

5.4 metres down to 5.2 doesn't sound a big difference but it means thousands of properties won't be flooded. The current reports are that 20,000 properties will be.

The area under water is larger than France & Germany combined and the flood waters are headed south into New South Wales so the north east of my home state is threatened.

People are being rescued from cars which have been washed away and from the roof of their homes...

Photo: Sky News. Town of Lockyer

Photo: Courier Mail. The town of Toowoomba

This shot from a television camera in a chopper shows a family on their sinking 4X4. The mother and son were rescued but sadly the father, a well-known local personality James Perry, is missing.

Photo: The Australian

The animals are affected too and people are doing their best to help them:

Men jumped in and battled to rescue this trapped horse, which was disoriented and couldn't find its way to the nearby high ground:

Photo: Network 10

The wild animals are in trouble of course, finding any high ground or something, anything, to cling on to, like this goanna:

Photo treehugger.com

And animals help each other in times of danger too.

This is one of the most amazing photos to come out of it so far. Armin Gerlach was visiting friends in the flood-hit town of Dalby when he spotted a brown snake (the world's second most venomous) giving a green frog a ride through the flood waters:

Photo: Armin Gerlach

The fog dun some of it

Fog can make for interesting photos, like this morning in Dubai Marina...



...but when it's combined with idiot drivers the picture is quite different:

Photo: Gulf News

Abu Dhabi once again had the worst of it. In this 18 vehicle crash two people were killed and eleven were injured, two seriously.

At least the fog wasn't blamed this time. This carnage was attributed to an idiot driver, who apparently "exited the highway without paying attention to traffic in the adjacent lane".

Nothing new there then.

The fog dunnit elsewhere in AD though. They weren't crashes, they were 'accidents'.

According to Gulf News ...multi-vehicle accidents...were due to poor visibility and heavy fog at dawn.

I'm concerned about some of the advice reportedly given to motorists by the Director of AD Police Traffic & Control Dept. 'Take simple precautions such as switching on hazard lights' was part of his advice according to Gulf News.

Gulf News has the story here.

A Saturday wander

How was my second visit to the dentist?

I don't want to talk about it.

Rapidly changing the subject...we had a wander around Downtown Burj Khalifa, or whatever it's called, yesterday.

I'm not a fan of most of New Dubai but this area is an exception. Burj Khalifa itself in my opinion is a stunning building and it looked its best in the bright sunshine.

It's not just the height of the building that always hits me, but also its mass. It is a huge building. The bottom of it is like nine normal skyscrapers side-by-side.

There weren't all that many people about but the board for the viewing level tickets showed its popularity.

I particularly like Old Town and Old Town Island. Not the usual modern could-be-anywhere buildings that are all over the city but architecture that reflects something of the area it's in.

What a pity that more of New Dubai doesn't do the same.

So far so good

About forty minutes or so in the dentist's chair yesterday.

No pain, well except for when he jabbed the needle straight into the nerve.

"Goodness me" I muttered under my breath "that was uncomfortable".

Or something along those lines.

After sitting for half an hour with a mouth full of the dentist's and his assistant's four hands, what felt like a cubic metre of cotton wool and lots of metal equipment, I'm surprisingly intact.

No swollen face, no bruises, no apparent damage and no pain, no toothache.

I have to go back for round two on Wednesday so I hope I come out of that equally well.

Grumpy? Me?

Welcome back to Dubai, Seabee.

Got back at about 6am Friday.

Tired from the nearly twenty four hours journey and the seven hour time difference...and I was awake most of last night with toothache.

Sitting in a dentist's chair was not in my plans for the first couple of days back. The diagnosis was a hole in a tooth, an infection and the answer is root canal treatment.

Oh great.

The first session was at lunchtime, I have to go back on Wednesday for more, then a third visit apparently.

And no, I don't feel lke writing much of a post just now.