Australians urged to donate online for flood relief

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has urged Australians to use online channels or retail outlets to donate funds to the flood relief appeal, following a surge of phone calls into the state's Smart Service call centres.

Donations can be made here.

As reported this morning on iTnews, emergency calls made to the state's call centre used the same infrastructure as the donation line for the Premier's Appeal, overloading the system.

"The response to the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal has been overwhelming and very welcome," read a statement from the Queensland Premier's office today.

"But due to unprecedented weather events, a large volume of emergency calls are coming in and must be the absolute priority."

Melbourne IT was hosting the appeal's website free of charge, while the online payments engine for the flood relief effort appeared to be hosted on an Amazon cloud server.

Camped out in the valley

IT engineers were camped out at Melbourne IT's data centre in Brisbane's low-lying Fortitude Valley after the area was named "at risk" by authorities this morning.

Melbourne IT chief technology officer Glenn Gore said the data centre would ride through the crisis, since it was located well off the ground floor.

Gore said that skeleton staff had agreed to stay on after roads into the area were blocked. Diesel generators were at the ready should power be cut and water reserves were available on the roof should Brisbane's fresh supply become contaminated and shut off.