Flood Disaster in Queensland

Of your charity, pray for all victims of the recent flooding in Queensland, especially as a result of the flash flooding in Toowoomba and environs, the dead and missing.  Pray, too, for those in Brisbane and elsewhere who are being evacuated as waters rise ever higher.

In the Lockyer Valley, including Toowoomba, nine are confirmed dead, many of them children, and sixty-six are still missing, with many feared drowned.

Prayers in Tribulation and for the Dead:

Kyrie, eleison!  Christe, eleison!  Kyrie, eleison!
Pater noster...
V/.  Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
R/.  Sed libera nos a malo.
V/.  Domine, exaudi orationem meam.
R/.  Et clamor meus ad te veniat.
Oremus.


Ne despicias, omnipotens Deus, populum tuum in afflictione clamantem: sed propter gloriam nominis tui, tribulatis succurre placatus.  Per Christum Dominum nostrum.  R/.  Amen.


V/.  Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine.
R/.  Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
V/.  Requiescant in pace.
R/.  Amen.
Oremus.


Fidelium, Deus, omnium conditor et redemptor, animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum: ut indulgentiam, quam semper optaverunt, piis supplicationibus consequantur.  Qui vivis et regnas per omnia sæcula sæculorum.  R/.  Amen.

Brisbane is now bracing for higher floods than struck in 1974, and similar threats face Ipswich.

While I've been crossing Cook Strait on a luxury ferry in clear skies, others have been awaiting help as the skies rain down yet more back in Australia, making conditions well-nigh impossible for rescue flights; while the sea is like a millpond here, Queenslanders have been swept away and drowned in raging waters.

Not having watched television since I took off for my New Zealand holiday, I only read of the Toowoomba disaster to-day while en route to Wellington, and it was just as I booked in at the hotel desk and turned toward the lifts that I saw a television broadcasting roving coverage of the ongoing emergency.