The Janergy Effect e-book link
I had lived in Brisbane for most of my life and wasn’t unhappy there and the thought never really struck me to move away. I had a great job, had cemented a fulfilling career path and was content to continue calling Brisbane home. But I think the universe had other plans for me.
Brisbane was known for its powerful storms and sometimes they were unexpected and struck with ferociousness. It was common place to see vision of people’s homes on the news after they had been devastated by wild storms, but I never thought that I would find myself in the path of one.
As the Brisbane storms build up they are usually visible as they roll in across from the west and on this particular day, we could see the clouds building and knew that a storm warning had been issued, but it didn’t look very nasty from where we were. Sometimes even the darkest of clouds turned out to be nothing more than a rain storm, but you could never tell so I decided to head home just in case. I was pretty confident that I’d make it home with no issues, as I didn’t live too far. I’d got just over a kilometre from work and it started to rain –but it still wasn’t looking like all hell was about to unleash, so I took my usual scenic route down along the river thinking it would just be a quick heavy shower and a great way to get the car washed!
Then out of nowhere, the rain took hold and the wind picked up. It made visibility really tough and it was now hard to see, so I stopped on the side of the road to wait for the rain to pass. I noticed that the wind was getting so strong and there were tall gum trees around me that were beginning to really sway so I decided that I’d better try and get to a safer spot in case a branch came down.
I began driving again, but it was near impossible so had to stop. And then the hail hit. There was nowhere to go and I wasn’t even able to find a driveway with a carport that I could pull into. I had been in a car when small hail had hit or safely undercover when I had seen bigger hail, but this was something else. This hail was the size that would sit nicely in a glass of whisky, while you sipped it slowly, waiting for a storm to pass.
I was expecting my windscreen to smash, or the ragtop of our convertible to be shredded, but thankfully those things stayed intact. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened. The sound was incredible and the car was being beaten to a pulp and all I could do was wait it out. The hail began to slow and I felt relieved that it was passing. But it wasn’t slowing, it was just taking a breath and getting ready to unleash a second more intense and more ferocious delivery then before. I really hoped that this time, it didn’t smash what was probably an already fragile windscreen or roof, in which case I’d be fucked.
As I was sitting there, I noticed that the water around me was starting to rise on the road, so decided I should try and move the car so water didn’t start to come in, or worse still, it floated away with the flash flood that was approaching.
I managed to drive to a higher spot and waited for the storm to pass. There were trees literally ripped out of the ground, branches everywhere, debris across the roads and water too deep to drive through.
It all felt very surreal and I remember driving on and feeling so overwhelmed with what had happened and what I was seeing, so I pulled over. People were now coming out of their homes to survey the damage and some people near where I was parked came out to see if I was okay and invited me in. I was probably in some kind of shock and I guess it wasn’t surprising, given what I had experienced. It was truly terrifying being in that storm and I thought I was probably going to be injured. But thanks to my super strong Volvo, I was protected, unlike other cars I was seeing around me. There wasn’t a chip on the windscreen and the ragtop roof was impeccable. The rest of the car though, was a mess.
I continued on with my journey home but the traffic on the main road was at a standstill and it just wasn’t possible to get through. The power was out, cars were stopped everywhere, so I decided to stop at the service station near home because I was really busting for a pee. I was literally 500 metres from home, but I was not able to go anywhere.
I found somewhere to sit down and took a lot of deep breaths. I head learned many years ago how to deal with anxiety and panic, so I did my best to go into relax mode and just kept breathing and talked myself through it.
It eventually became possible for me to drive the short distance home and see all the houses in our street and surrounds suffering major damage and ours was included.
The storm that hit was a supercell storm where two storm fronts merge and cause an almighty fuck up. It was one of Australia’s worst storms and the worst one Brisbane had seen since 1985 and our suburb was one of the hardest hit. The clouds we could see building from our office, were nothing compared to what others were seeing and this storm was so bad, that a year later they were still talking about it and even gave it an anniversary. If you were to google November storm Brisbane, you would get an idea of what had hit us.
Here’s a video someone took in our suburb to show how wild it was.
During the afternoon, I had been trying to call my ex-husband to let him know that storms were approaching and asked if he could close the windows, but he was at a movie and we never got to speak until shortly before I got home. He had made it home safely but was witness to the unfolding devastation and when I arrived, my son met me outside and warned me about what I was going to see before stepping inside our house. The damage outside our home was enough to tell me that inside may not have fared well either.
I was now one of many people who had been in one of the worst storm disasters in Australia and we had no idea where to begin the clean-up.
It was a long time before we had power back on and everything that had been touched by the storm was wet, including my newly found single woman bed. The storm had hit the back and side of our house and hail had smashed over 50 windows – yes, we had a lot. There was a lot of louvres and they were mainly downstairs where many of our things were being stored awaiting the reno, that was now no longer going to happen. There was no need to shut the windows that day, because most of them ended up gone.
The hail and wind were so strong that it smashed holes through furniture and other personal items in three rooms. I no longer had cupboards, drawers, clothes, shoes, sewing machines or computers. But I had a lot of water, glass, leaves and an almighty mess to clean up. Furniture was literally thrown around inside the house and what wasn’t damaged by hail was affected by water.
The clean-up was pretty traumatic. The council arranged a kerbside collection and we began piling our damaged possessions out onto the street. At one point a man called out to ask if something in the pile was still working and could he have it. That was a distressing moment as I guess it felt a bit like looting, even though we had to part with these things and it was a kind of heartless feeling to think that people were ready to pounce on your possessions that had been destroyed in such an unforgiving way.
The hail also damaged the roof and caused a number of leaks inside our home. One was in our study, which I became aware of after I awoke to a drip drip drip sound in the middle of the night and the other leak was a biggie in our kitchen. This drip was the mother of all drips and eventually required us to call in the state emergency service to put a tarp on our roof.
There was little that could be done to fix this one, apart from a new roof and our insurers weren’t willing to do this. They said our roof was too old and no evidence of hail damage could be found on the outside. They sent out numerous investigators to try and find evidence of hail damage, but each time they denied its existence. One day there is no rain coming through the ceiling and the next day there is rain coming in and the only common factor was an almighty hail storm. They ended up offering us “goodwill” payments as a gesture for the stress we were enduring with the roof. This went on for months and our kitchen became home to numerous permanent buckets needed to catch the summer rain.
We eventually got an independent review of the roof and the inspector actually climbed into the ceiling cavity and discovered incredible pitting that could have only been caused by severe hail. We hoped this would be sufficient for the insurance to cover the repair or replacement, but nope, the insurers stood their ground and maintained that there was no damage was from hail. We took our case to the ombudsman who also sided with the insurer, so we were left with no choice but to arrange a costly repair ourself.
Thankfully, the insurer did agree to pay for all other damage and repairs that had occurred and for that we were grateful.
The beautiful car which had kept me safe during the storm was written off. The hail damage was shocking and the force of it actually threw the car off its foundations.
In the midst of going through this separation and having to live with my ex-husband, I had to deal with the effects of the storm, but I did it with the best way I knew how – with grace, humour, acceptance and an umbrella that I would wear on my head inside to keep me dry.
We had bought the house in 2010 with grand plans of renovating what would have become a great home, but even before ending my marriage it was necessary for us to sell. We had a couple of offers, that would have set us up financially, but at the time, it wasn’t meant to be.
I took a couple of days off work to deal with the clean up and remember going out for something and caught sight of myself in a mirror. I didn’t realise that I had mascara all under my eyes and when I stopped to try and wipe it off, I discovered it wasn’t mascara, it was black bags pretending to be mascara and no amount of wiping would make it move.
What that told me, was that I needed to stop and do a check in with myself, and after acknowledging that within the space of a few weeks, two very significant life events had happened, I booked a ticket to Fiji to go and see my family and flew out the following morning.
Actually, I nearly didn’t fly out, because after waiting for an hour and a half in the check in line, I got to the front of the queue to discover that my passport was out of date by ONE day. Can you believe it? One freaken day.
After some frantic calls to the Fijian authorities in Suva I was given permission to travel and made it to the gate after taking my shoes off and running the length of the airport as my name was being called over the loudspeaker to alert me that I was about to be offloaded.
I arrived to the plane and burst into tears. The flight attendants gave me a box of tissues and I cried nearly the whole way to Fiji. Yeah, I needed that release.
After a wonderful break, it was back home to the reality of living in a situation that was not likely to change until we were able to sell our house.
A storm is the way that the atmosphere releases energy and with it comes change. Change from the preceding heat to the welcome coolness or in my case a change that was bigger than just the damage to my home and possessions. It was a change that paved the way for me to follow an opportunity that I never would have seen on my horizon.
I guess my take away for this time is:
- Make sure your insurance is in order
- If you are going to buy a car, consider a Volvo, its ability to keep me safe and do its duty exceeded its safety rating expectation
- If you are going to book an overseas holiday make sure your passport is current
- Don’t wear high heels at an airport, in case you have to run to catch your flight
- Recognise when to stop and take a break, if it’s all feeling too much and know that it’s okay to down tools.
Actually, maybe forget number three, because who needs a passport in 2020 anyway?
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