h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ivan (and others) you may want to have a look at this:

http://groups.google.com/group/h2g2communityconsortium

also: i am already member of two facebook groups. sort of life rafts if the worst should happen. in the meantime people are having great fun there meeting long lost and almost forgotten members who have left for various reasons and now can't get back in due to the (relatively) new sign up thingy

Hi Ivan The backlog is horrendous on a daily basis, so gawd knows how much you're facing

Pierce: I've decided to have "great fun" here on h2g2 meeting long lost friends, rather than doing it on facebook or anywhere else. I reckon the more active this site is, the more likely it's attractive to potential investors

Oh, and why can't people get back in? I found it simply a case of refilling in a form...

some have been away so long they missed the window - even if it was fairly wide

and don't get us wrong, frenchbean: we continually encourage each other to keep hootoo as alive and kicking as possible!

which is w*rking, i guess, since the traffic here seems to be overwhelming - and not only today

we also use fb and other sites and lots of people's blogs to make people around the globe aware of the situation

Meanwhile, northern Queensland is bracing itself for a truly horrible time with the biggest, strongest cyclone in living memory. (Fb, I'm truly glad you're not in Cooktown or thereabouts now.) This is changing my perspective on hootoo's woes somewhat. Don't get me wrong, I want this site to continue in some form, but I don't have the spare capacity for thinking about all the details right now...

first floods and now a superstorm? it aint fair!

here's hoping you get through this

I have a lot of friends up there, Ivan And yes, I'm thankful to be in the relatively benign climate of NZ (Earthquakes? Pah! A mere shoogle and a shake.)

There were texts aplenty last night, but nothing this morning. I assume towers are down. Everybody seemed prepared, but one family wasn't able to get into an evacuation centre just outside Cairns because it was full (so were all the others) and they were facing a very tense night bunkered down at home with mattresses and bike helmets (amongst other things) in case the roof went.

Friends in Mission Beach were slap bang in the path of the centre of the storm and I'm most concerned about them. They were just about wiped out with TC Larry of course, and they said that Yasi was already a lot worse than Larry by midnight - which was three hours before the eye wall.

So I too feel that my priorities are slightly changed this week. Much of my focus is on FNQ... and waiting... and hoping...

Frenchbean

On the bright side, Cairns seems to have come through without severe damage.

On the not bright side, there's no way of getting news from Mission Beach yet.

cheers Ivan

A friend in Mission Beach tells me the place is bare of greenery, houses are shredded and there's water everywhere. But as far as she knows, no lives lost A bloody miracle...

I've been watching TV programming prognosticating a 'super storm', incongruous on the point that the commentators seem not to have quite grasped there is one under way even now in north eastern Australia.

Hurrah for Mission Beach! All a bit of a mess, but that can be fixed in time.

The latest report on the entire cyclone zone is that there are two men reported missing, no known fatalities, no known serious injuries - and at least one baby born in an evacuation centre.

We have been so amazingly lucky.

But apart from luck, this is what can be done with advance warning and preparation. We're getting better at this sort of thing.

But it's not over yet; Yosi is still a cyclone, though now a lowly Category 1, and it's on track to hit Mt Isa tonight. For those who don't know, Mt Isa is in the absolute outback. Having a cyclone that far inland is just freakish.

While a storm like that isn't good news, I'm glad to hear the human cost has been so minimal. I hope you hear from your friends soon, it must be a real worry!

I second that. Even this far away in the middle of the UK I can't help worrying. everyone.

Websailor

i hear cyclone hitting cairns and mt isa is like a tornado hitting new york and going all the way to chicago

and they say we must get used to weather like this - and even worse - due to the climate changes

this is not good

...record snowfall in Oklahoma... The southernmost remnant of the ice age permafrost in the USA is there in the Witchita mountains, under a glacial morraigne of detached boulders up to 300m in size... (about the size of asteroid Apophis)

I'm glad the loss of life has been slight, but in terms of geographical extent and property damage, one of the worst storms in history.

Latest reports:

One of the missing men has been found safe and well; the other is still missing.

There fas been one confirmed fatality - a young man was asphyxiated as a result of running a diesel generator in an unventilated space, just like the instructions tell people not to do.

Yasi is no longer a cyclone but a 'tropical low' instead, dumping a lot of water on the desert.

There are flood alerts in all sorts of random places.

Canberra got rather wet quite suddenly this afternoon. There's clearly more to come.

It still goes on.... The Alice is now getting thunderous rain and flash flooding from Yasi-that-was

And a couple of people are still missing. Thankfully the clean up is getting underway, although in some places is at a standstill because of new floods....

And so it goes on...

While I was on the abc website, this headline caught my eye:
>>Malawian lawmakers will next week debate a law change to criminalise public farting, which a cabinet minister said had been encouraged by democracy<<

That cheered me up.

Fb

I just pity the poor public servants in Malawi who would get stuck with the monitoring, compliance and enforcement role.