It’s gotta be climate change. After all, there’s never been a storm in Perth before, right?
Al was supposed to stop this from happening. You fat bastard!
This will certainly mean hard work for the local councils and the volunteers in the SES, all of which do a great job.
The City of Melville was the hardest hit, but I happen to have the inside scoop that the men and women working for Melville are absolutely fucking brilliant, and I’m sure it’ll be cleaned up very well and pretty fast.
Yo, Perthians, youse better all be safe, or I’s gonna hunt you down, you gots it?
* Image from The West.
Click for more photos, taken by our man on the ground.
The Tizona Group 
July 18, 2008, 7:16 am at 7:16 am
It was pretty wild Ash, and it will take some time to clean up.
It was a big day and everyone put their heart into clearing the main highways. The minor roads will need a lot of work too. There were a couple of funny incidents too, but I won’t go into them,lol.
July 18, 2008, 7:26 am at 7:26 am
Tell her about the giant golf ball rolling down the road, TimH! Hehehe! 🙂
July 18, 2008, 7:28 am at 7:28 am
Pissing down in Kal now, no huge winds though so all should be fine out here…
July 18, 2008, 7:37 am at 7:37 am
No injuries or deaths, I hope. As to the rest, having grown up in Florida and now surrounded by trees in Tennessee, that’s why God made insurance.
July 18, 2008, 7:37 am at 7:37 am
Lol, Spot, I didn’t hear about that! Do tell 🙂
July 18, 2008, 7:38 am at 7:38 am
None that I know of Tiz.
July 18, 2008, 7:40 am at 7:40 am
Well Tim, I’m certain that those at the councils and the SES are working hard and doing a fantastic job.
Spot, what’s the deal with the golf ball?
Tizona, insurance companies over there are going to be going “oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!”
July 18, 2008, 7:43 am at 7:43 am
Spoke to soon. See that one poor fellow in the vehicle wreck. When sheets cover the body, it’s not good. Rest in Peace, good fellow.
July 18, 2008, 7:45 am at 7:45 am
Ginornmous “novelty” golf ball that used to adorn the roof of a golfing shop liberated itself and went flying down Dixon Road. Bwahahaha! As my mate who was just pulling into a car park and saw it happen put it, “Spot, I have just had the quintessential WTF Moment.”
July 18, 2008, 7:57 am at 7:57 am
# 8, he was “seriously injured”, hope he makes it.
#9 Dixon Road, Rockingham?
# 10, I hope so, the wind is pretty gusty here right now
July 18, 2008, 8:16 am at 8:16 am
#10 Yup. Hope someone got pics!
July 18, 2008, 8:18 am at 8:18 am
Ash, insurance companies always say that. All the seem to want, are the premiums. They bet that nothing will happen, but make sure one understands ‘they’ are betting not so much against the insured, but Mother Nature (in most instances re: car wrecks NOT associated with Mother Nature, which take God knows how many lives per year and I’m to lazy to search).
You see, with the premi’ money their exec’s can build larger homes on the Gulf of Mexico, or the higher peaks on mountains. Impress their friends you see.
Then when their places disappear under a storm surge wave, or are smashed to bits by taller trees, instead of “oh fuck”, it’s ‘well premi’ hikes’.
I must admit however, that with the every year storms we have throughout the States, or out of control wildfires, rock slides, earthquakes, floods and whatever else Mommy Nature devises, the “oh fucks” are said in chorus. That includes when it strikes the exec’s personally. Seems like Mommy doesn’t give two shits about what one does, nor does she care how high up the ladder one is.
July 18, 2008, 8:25 am at 8:25 am
Hey TimH, as long as you’re around, check out SBS in a few minutes (8:30) – “As It Happened: Space Hackers”
Hope my electricity stays on long enough to see it – it’s blowing a gale again… And COLD. Curse you, Glowball Warmening!
July 18, 2008, 8:28 am at 8:28 am
# 7, they certainly are!
And I stuffed up with my “#10” in my # 10, lol, I meant # 3.
July 18, 2008, 8:29 am at 8:29 am
Tim
Hope he makes it as well.
Fooled the devils one year in Florida. Had just had installed a satellite dish (that’s when the things were the size of NASA tracking satellites dishes). Called the insurance company to add it on the policy, they said HELL NO, haven’t you checked the weather forecast, a tropical storm has just formed in the Gulf.
Sure as hell, soon a full blown hurricane headed directly to the Florida Panhandle. Had to tape, board, evacuate and wonder what would be left, if anything.
When the resi’s were allowed back in…war zone look…EXCEPT my dish. 🙂 HA!
July 18, 2008, 8:36 am at 8:36 am
Spot, I would love to watch it, sadly, I don’t receive SBS where I live 😦
July 18, 2008, 8:36 am at 8:36 am
Insurance companies are just big meanies.
Spot, are you implying that perhaps Global Warming isn’t real?
HERETIC!
July 18, 2008, 8:38 am at 8:38 am
Tiz, me too, as I’m sure we all do.
LOL, Bummer about your dish 😦
July 18, 2008, 8:44 am at 8:44 am
#16 Oh man – that’s a shame. It’s about the those two young guys in the 50’s, during the Cold War. They’re playing the tapes of the intercepts of Laika barking just now – spooky or what? Gonna settle in and watch now, catchya later.
July 18, 2008, 8:49 am at 8:49 am
# 19, Enjoy it 🙂
July 18, 2008, 11:59 am at 11:59 am
Looks like the desert southwest in the summer. Welcome to the monsoon people. Don’t check your waterwings at the door.
July 18, 2008, 3:11 pm at 3:11 pm
Tell me about monsoons. I moved to a freaking DESERT because I hate rain, and we’ve had rain probably twelve out of the last fourteen days. Everything is green and beautiful, which is strange and wonderful, but it always seems to rain at 7:00 PM, which has messed up my running schedule terribly.
And, boy howdy, have I ever seen more than my share of scenes like those pictured above from back in my disaster recovery biz days: Wood frame houses pancaked by toppled two-hundred year old oaks, mobile homes cut completely in half by fallen 85′ pines, a couple of dozen mobile homes stacked like cordwood by a flooding river, a 1/2 mile wide path of total destruction cut through a town by a tornado – the list goes on.
July 18, 2008, 4:36 pm at 4:36 pm
Angus
Yup. And the older parts of Tucson don’t have any storm drain systems in place so it doesn’t take much rain to flood whole parts of town. Another problem we have every summer is to convince people that you don’t even have to have rain to be swept away in our desert washes, they just don’t get it. It will rain in the mountains with very little or no rain in the valley itself and people will think they are safe to go over washes or even camp in them. This becomes known as “swiftwater rescue” in no time.
July 18, 2008, 6:59 pm at 6:59 pm
My manager lives in Tucson. Off of Tanque Verde in Indian something-or-other Estates in an old Adobe Brick house that is awesome as hell. Next time I’m out we ought to get together for some Mexican food and beer. I love Tucson. It’s one of the only cities I can stand. I especially like how no freeways run through it. It’s just a vast, sprawling small town.
I know the swiftwater routine. A t-storm in the hills can flood a road on the plane ten miles out here. “Foreigners” just don’t understand the phenomenon. LOL!
July 18, 2008, 9:10 pm at 9:10 pm
Tim Flannery said it was never gonna rain in Perth again and we were gonna turn into a parched ghost town. Heh. Gaia laughs at you, Tim Flannery!
July 18, 2008, 9:29 pm at 9:29 pm
Spot/Tim
1. http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/default.htm
2. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0235a.shtml
3. Debunker: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Torre/TorreB.html
Enjoy
July 18, 2008, 9:53 pm at 9:53 pm
#26 And?…
July 19, 2008, 1:20 am at 1:20 am
Gaia likes mocking Tim Flannery. Mostly because it’s easy.
As to the SBS show Spot, they were pretty damn clever to be able to do that. Italians always are 😛
July 19, 2008, 1:30 am at 1:30 am
🙂 They must be, Ash. The SBS show didn’t do much on the “lost cosmonauts” hoo-ha, least not that I thought. Mostly covered the hacking-into-space-radio-feeds aspect, which is uncontested, by a couple of enterprising post-Marconi-ans.
And yeah, if you’re ever short on rain, just get Flannery to proclaim you a ghost town. Fixed.
July 19, 2008, 1:51 am at 1:51 am
He’d proclaim Melbourne a ghost town, but he’s too busy flying down here to talk to people about Global Warming as the rain pelts the outside of the skyscraper he’s currently in, and so he doesn’t believe it.
Yet.
Also doesn’t help that he only needs three jackets to keep his blood slightly warm and flowing.
Melbourne winters suck.