"No hint of that in the Australian media". Strange - I saw it on the news, and long before the sport came on. Obviously, it hasn't been given as much airtime as the SEQ floods - possibly because it is a much more common occurrence (the favelas around Rio are frequently subject to disaster), possibly because it has no immediate impact on the bulk of the Australian population. That said, several days of rolling coverage, showing the same footage over and over, has been a terrible waste of our TV resources. It wasn't particularly helpful to the people in flood-affected areas, either: because it was national coverage, it was too vague to be of value.

Again, FWIW to those who are interested, this article has been the top article on the 'today's most popular' display on the main page all morning.

See: http://twitpic.com/3prytn

It would be interesting to know what proportion of views of the article are being made via the Vexnews Twittered link, if that is possible to determine.

As far as the media is concerned is the only flood happened in Brisbane.
At least that is all we in vic are told about.
I don't know how big a bill the federal govt; would put into this. If this is going to happen more frequently, the money would be better off going into more sustainable projects.