Thursday, January 13, 2011

Floods peak in Brisbane

Large parts of the Australian city of Brisbane and surrounding areas were under water and infrastructure devastated after flood waters peaked.


Access to the port by road was possible and power had been restored, but terminals remained closed to shipping.

Large swathes of the road and rail network in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales are unusable with many remote communities cut off from supplies. Brisbane Airport remains open, but access by road is limited.

It is predicted that widespread destruction caused by floodwater across Queensland and northern New South Wales would cause logistics chaos in the weeks ahead.

Llew Russell, CEO of Shipping Australia, said that even once the port of Brisbane re-opened, queues should be expected. “There is a lot of debris in the river, and when that is cleared there has to be inspections of the berths and probably a hydrographic survey of the swing basin for vessels seeking berths at Fishermen Islands. “One would hope that the port will re-open no later than next Monday – hopefully earlier.”

Russell said some cargo had been taken to New Zealand, while a number of vessels had been forced to discharge cargo in Sydney. “Hopefully this can mostly be transhipped back to Brisbane at a later date,” he added.

David Anderson, Ports Australia Chief Executive, said supply chains would be disrupted for an extended period even after floodwaters had retreated. “It will have a huge impact on the community and on the infrastructure level,” he said. “We have to do what we can to address both of those impacts and we would be expecting a fair bit of government assistance to get transport infrastructure up and running as it’s important for our overseas markets and our reliability as a supplier.”

Demand for freight and express services is forecast to spike in the coming weeks as relief efforts gets under way.

Source  IFW

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