You may not be able to recognise where that picture is taken. If you looked directly left from the photographer Adam Smith's vantage point, you'd see the Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital. Or rather, where I spend most of my week as a theatre nurse.
This was Wednesday afternoon. I was rostered for a night duty shift, so hadn't really heard much news until about 5pm. I rang work and basically got told the hospital was 'cut off'. What do you mean cut off? As in, every public access route to the hospital was under water. The Shift Co-ordinator basically told me to 'hang tight', and she'd call back.
Before that happened, I had phonecalls, texts and facebook messages telling me to chuck a sickie. Further investigation revealed that the whole of Butterfield St (the road into the hospital) was blocked off, and many many people had had to be evacuated from the carparks and many others still had no access to their cars.
I was rung back at 9pm and told that there was one way in, and one way in only. And if it was closed off - I was to go home.
Brad drove me in with an hour to spare and it took us FOUR attempts to get into work. Every road we tried was blocked by water. Our last chance was the back gate and being able to access one staff door. Our pass cards are activated for only certain areas of the hospital, so it was not guaranteed I'd get access without help from security.
Thankfully, the back gate was open and my access card worked, so I got into work with only minutes to spare.
It's pretty scary when the main tertiary referral hospital in Brisbane is completely blocked off to the public!
2 comments:
wow, it sure has been wet up there! Great photo Sasch.
Wow! I heard it got pretty full on in there but had no idea how major it was and on such a major road too! Traffic havoc I would imagine!
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