Having lost my rented home in the Brisbane floods, I then sought to rent property some 2 years after 2011, in & around the same Brisbane inner city area. i.e. i.t.o. inner city proximity (NOT flood risk - of course).
(Flood = a God awful experience - loosing all you physically own. Thankfully no lives lost.)
Landlord's agents, at house inspections, pulled me aside from the small crowd of inspectee's (if such a word exists) to hush me, when I asked if premises had flooded in 2011! [In three visited cases ►they had◄ - but I had to find that out myself.]
Landlord agents state no warnings to potential lessees. Neither in the the affirmative nor negative. They simply clam up.
Tenants Beware ===► caveat lessee - Bring your own rubber duck
Not a single landlord's agent pointed out to potential tenants, the status of the historic flood/floodplain to prospective tenants. Tenants who (my bias) often seemed to be fresh immigrants.
No sense of Antifragile concern (after Nassim Taleb) that the last 100 year flood high mark, should reasonably not be expected as the NEXT rule of thumb or 100% for future generations, but rather as a Fibonacci benchmark for the next 61.8% 100 year high flood risk level!
A planned hormesis by the city (and hence people) of Brisbane?
Oblivious of the 1974 floods, my knowing 2011 landlord, whose property flooded in 1974, rented to me with neither caveat nor caution. The night before the 2011 floods, his mum came to warn me that the house was to flood, as it had done in 1974. Wasn't she a darling!
But by then I knew that I/we would flood, and also that my rented property had once flooded, (Based on the rusted electrical piping I discovered in the garage ceiling. Piping submerged in 1974. By then my neighbour explained the electrical piping rust - in the roof!!!!)
But by then neighbours told me too that Wivenhoe had been built - as the safeguard. That was their safeguard.
While I expected the damage, 12 hours before the flood.
To which I thank premier Anna Bligh in trying to tell me otherwise, while dog-whistling we would flood, I scrambled to salvage as much as I could before the flood!
' Three Sydney harbour's water is flooding into Wivenhoe in 24 hours, only one Sydney harbour's water can be relaesed in 24 hours.' She dog-whistled.
The message was sharp & clear to me!
As much as you can, within 12 hours dog-whistle notice, and with no-where to take your stuff? Where do you take your stuff? In my case the open verandah's of three kind, caring & knowing mates... everything I could in unmarked dustbin liners. Papers, clothing, electrical appliances, loose tools, bicycles, ... what ever. I spent the very last few hours trying to raise furniture & white go0ds on trellises I speedily bolted up. Until it became clear my suburb had been insulated by the flood waters, and I had to go...
I had to go fast.
Sadly those trellises were too fickle & in vein. We flooded, in human shit & sewage, to the ceilings...
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Contributory damage
One of my neighbours who had survived the 1974 flood, simply trebled his daily Xanax dose, locked his front door, never did a damned thing, not even a care for his important personal information - and took a taxi to his daughter who lived on high ground.
How do I know? He told me ►then◄!
The Cool Hand Luke strategy.
A great plan ...
He lost everything.
But he had insurance... sortov (Only sortuv - he was to find. Insurance companies wear different contractual glasses. So sortuv... )
