The Australian government has evacuated over 200,000

[malaise]

people from an area bigger than Texas. Those Queensland floods aren't over yet either.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/31/3104129.htm

I love intelligent people manning operations.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/31/3104640.htm

Meanwhile aid agencies have begun salvaging food items from a flooded supermarket in Emerald after the Nogoa River peaked at 16 metres on Thursday night.

On Friday the centre had about half a metre of water running through it and aid agencies have moved in to salvage food for the town's evacuation centres.

The town's Coles shopping complex, which is situated near the completely submerged Vince Lester Bridge, has also been inundated with water.

Helicopters are also making food drops into Emerald and other isolated towns in the Central Highlands.

[canetoad]

1. Queensland is roughly

the light area on the outline of Oz. Half of that is undewater.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. The contrast with New Orleans is striking

and embarrassing and infuriating.

Imagine, evacuating people and salvaging items from stores instead of condemning desperate people for "looting"!

(I will never forget the video footage of a young mother giving her baby bottled orange juice outside the Superdome. Yes, she probably took it from a store, but what mother would say, "Here's this juice that is going to go bad anyway in this heat, but I'll just let my baby die of dehydration, because it would be LOOTING to take it"? Yet there were DUers who condemned the stranded people of New Orleans for helping themselves to food and beverages that would be of no use to the storekeeper or anyone else after things settled down.)

[Octafish]

3. Exactly.

Every word.

Two tragedies: One ameliorated by compassion. The other an ulcerated wound in the national psyche.