Floods are not new to Queensland. We can look back to the 1840s to see the effects of rising rivers on low lying areas.
In modern times Queensland Police work in partnership with emergency services to keep people and property safe. But in times past, police officers were often the only emergency personnel on the ground.
In the 1890s there were a series of huge floods which devastated Brisbane and Ipswich – imagine all of Southbank under water.
In 1990 Charleville went under water by quite a few meters and the whole town had to be evacuated. In late 2010 and early 2011 almost every square kilometre of Queensland was flooded. The associated heartache of this flooding was experienced by almost every police officer working across the state.
These images illustrate that during floods police officers are usually in the thick of things, sometimes to the detriment of their own health and safety in their efforts to undertake their duties.
If you want to read about the history of Queensland floods visit the Bureau of Meteorology site visit: http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/index.shtml
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This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available at the time of writing.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT – A land of drought and flooding rains…” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode