Alfred Aftermath

It's been a stressful couple of weeks for me, mostly due to the fine gentleman at one time known as Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

 Alfred after a while of lurking off the coast of Queensland decided it was going to hit around Brisbane. This is a bit unusual as Brisbane is by no means tropical, and cyclones have generally been things that happen to other parts of Queensland. 

 With the way my schedule work, I was going to be working day shift the day before and after it was due to hit, and night shifts the next two days. However, due to Alfred deciding to hang off the coast overnight, the worst of it was on my first night shift.

Works prep for the cyclone was a bit mixed. It's unusual to get so much notice of a natural disaster like this (the last one was the floods a few years ago which we were about two days into before it became apparent just how bad it was going to be), so there was a fair bit of prep down. Preparations for remote work was done, sites were prepped and in some cases equipment removed to avoid it getting damaged by flooding, and so on. When the cyclone didn't hit on the expected day, it caused a little problem as some of the preparations were only practical for a limited time and stretching them out an extra day would cause some problems in and of itself. Some were easy to resolve such as allowing crews back on some sites to check up on equipment and do some more prep, others couldn't be changed and we just had to deal with more overflows.

 The night of the storm hitting was rather stressful. There were some things that came up that normally wouldn't be too much, but due to the weather we couldn't respond in a BAU fashion. The biggest was probably a water main burst due to a fallen tree. Normally, we'd work to fix it straight away, but in this case the winds were too strong and all we could do was isolate the burst and get out of dodge, which left a bunch of people without water until it was safe to go back almost a day and a half later. The stress was also piled on by the cyclone's impacts to the teams internet connectivity. My team was working from home, and half of us didn't have internet for a large part of the night, leaving the other half (of which I was part) to cover everything. Fortunately we were able to get someone from another team to join us on short notice to help out.

 On Sunday we were given the ok to return to the office (if it was safe to travel) which I did. The systems are much more reliable on the dedicated computers and there were fewer worries about losing internet or power. Two of my team couldn't get in and worked remotely, and one of them lost power partway through the night. 

In the days off post that block of shifts, I slept a lot of Monday and took Tuesday as a relaxation day. I went to a local City Cave and did a sauna, float session, and got a massage, and then went to a showing of Sister Act that night (I was impressed at how quick QPAC got back into action, actually I'm impressed overall at how quick Brisbane got back to normal even if there was a lot of small things still to be fixed up). On the way home I ran into a friend from uni who now lives in the apartment building next to mine and rather than chat in the street I invited her to my place where we spent about 2 hours talking. I'll admit I'm a pretty poor host as I didn't really have anything to offer by way of food or drink. I had planned to check in with the office on Wednesday and offer an 8 hour shift if needed, but I overslept and didn't wake up until almost noon, which was a sign of how tired I was. Thursday I had a PT session, then I went in to the office to catch up on where things were at so I didn't have to catch up on too much the next morning, and in the evening went to the book club I'm part of (Rump and Reading, we meet up at a bar on their discount steak night). I think only 2 of the 8 or so people who could make it actually finished this month's book East of Eden (I was one of the 2 who had). I'll try and put up a review soon.

Friday was back into work and while the situation wasn't great, it was better than I'd been expecting. There was still a fair bit of the business leaning in to support the recovery effort which was a help, but there were times over the weekend where a new team came on where it felt I was having to cover territory that had been sorted out the day before and getting them up to speed on areas that weren't my area of focus.

One thing I want to loop back to was the Friday night before the cyclone hit. After I finished work at 6, I spent a few hours finishing East of Eden, and then around 10pm I went out on my balcony to look out on the storm. There wasn't too much wind or rain at the time, and I stood out on my balcony looking up at the sky. At the time I was overcome by a feeling of powerlessness and a feeling that despite all the preparations I'd made both for work and for my home, ultimately there was little I could control in regards to the cyclone. This was a nearly overwhelming feeling, and lasted about half an hour before I was able to put myself together. In part this was because this was the first time in two days I'd not been overwhelmingly focused on something else, and possibly a bit due to hunger as after I'd collected myself I'd realised I'd not had a meal since breakfast, and after that realisation eating something did a lot help me pull myself together. I don't often experience strong emotions, and fear was not a pleasant one to have to wallow in.

I'm now on days off again, and tomorrow I'm flying down to Sydney to visit my sister and go to two recordings of Taskmaster Aus season 5 episodes which will be a good way to get out of the cyclone stress.