A ‘deep clean’ has been ordered for a Brisbane hospital ward. What does that actually involve

Brett Mitchell, University of Newcastle and Philip Russo, Monash UniversityThe Australian public’s infection control literacy continues to expand. We know what PPE is, what “flattening the curve” means, and we are growing increasingly familiar with the term “deep clean”. But what does a deep clean involve, and when is it necessary?

This week, media reported that a ward at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital was to undergo further “deep cleaning” after testing found a “COVID-19 related virus” in the ward. This was to be combined with further engineering reviews, although the ward’s isolation rooms were deemed to be functioning as expected.

What role does environmental cleaning play?

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can survive on surfaces. This means if a surface is contaminated by someone with COVID-19, it is theoretically possible for other people to become infected if they touch those surfaces and then touch their nose, mouth, or eyes.

It is not clear how many cases of COVID-19 are acquired through surface transmission, although the risk from this transmission route is thought to be lower than other routes, such as droplets, aerosols and direct contact.

The other good news is that SARS-CoV-2 is easily broken down and can degrade quickly upon contact with particular cleaning agents and under certain environmental conditions.

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How worried should I be about news the coronavirus survives on surfaces for up to 28 days?

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Nonetheless, because SARS-CoV-2 can survive on surfaces and there is a theoretical risk, it is important that measures to reduce subsequent transmission include cleaning. This is on top of other, potentially more important measures such as increasing appropriate ventilation, waiting as long as possible before entering the space (at least several hours), and using personal protective equipment (PPE).

So, what is a deep clean?

There is no nationally agreed definition of what constitutes a “deep clean”. The term seems to have originated during disease outbreaks in hospitals in the 1990s and 2000s.

Cleaning is a complex and skilled process involving many facets. Evidence has shown that improving routine cleaning in hospitals can reduce infection risk, and that this is cost-effective. But what is the difference between a routine cleaning and deep cleaning?

There’s no agreed definition of a deep clean, but it goes a long way beyond mopping the floor.
Masanori Inagaki/AP

In the absence of detailed guidelines, institutions and companies have developed their own approach to deep cleaning. In Victoria, there is some limited guidance of what a deep clean involves.

Broadly speaking, a deep clean should pay particular attention to cleaning objects or surfaces that may not be cleaned as part of a routine clean. These could include walls, ventilation ducts, curtains, and harder-to-reach surfaces that are touched less frequently. In contrast, routine cleaning focuses on surfaces that are frequently touched.

Deep cleaning typically involves the use of a disinfectant, as well as a detergent. Typically detergents are used to remove organic matter. Disinfectant can kill bacteria and viruses (depending on the type of disinfectant). Products or surfaces that are more difficult to clean, such as carpets, soft furnishings or certain equipment, may also be included in a more thorough clean, noting that care has to be taken not to damage such items in the process.

Training and auditing are also crucial for effective cleaning. Cleaners need to be properly trained, including in the correct use of PPE to ensure they are protected.

Regular auditing of cleaning can be done in various ways, including direct observation or by using fluorescent markers. Fluorescent markers are invisible to the naked eye, but are removed when a surface is cleaned. They can be applied before cleaning a surface and checked again after, to determine whether it has been effectively cleaned.

What about ‘fogging’?

Media footage often shows workers “fogging” rooms and facilities as part of a deep clean. This involves spraying the area with very fine droplets of disinfectant, and it certainly makes for compelling television.

But several Australian organisations have recommended against fogging, including the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, New South Wales’ Clinical Excellence Commission and Safe Work Australia.

The US Environmental Protection Agency does not recommend fogging or fumigation, unless the product label specifically includes disinfection directions. Australia’s Therapeutical Goods Administration has also noted that testing of disinfectants may not apply to techniques such as fogging.

Where to from here?

Like all things COVID-19, our understanding of the role of surface transmission and the benefits of deep cleaning continues to evolve. Any unusual transmission events or “mystery” cases, particularly in a health-care setting, need to be thoroughly investigated.

Technologies such as genomic testing, which provide detailed information about specific chains of transmission between people, could provide rich data to help us understand the role of the environment and inform future strategies.

Importantly, any findings from investigating these unusual events need to be made publicly available so the wider community can better understand how to combat the spread of COVID-19.

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Read more:
Catching COVID from surfaces is very unlikely. So perhaps we can ease up on the disinfecting

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Brett Mitchell, Professor of Nursing, University of Newcastle and Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

COVID in Brisbane: 3-day lockdown begins as authorities scramble to find missing links

Catherine Bennett, Deakin UniversityGreater Brisbane enters a three-day lockdown from 5pm today after it recorded four additional COVID cases in the community, taking the total number to seven.

Other Australian states and territories have introduced varying levels of restrictions for people who have been in the affected areas.

Since we heard of the initial positive case on Friday, the way things have played out has been a little shambolic.

It’s a pity we’ve got to a point where we need another lockdown in Australia, but it’s imperative Queensland health authorities use this time to connect all the dots in this outbreak. While genomic sequencing can tell us several of these cases are linked, how they’re linked remains something of a mystery.

Here we go again

To recap, we learned on Friday a 26-year-old man from the Brisbane suburb of Stafford had tested positive to COVID-19. He was infected with the B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the United Kingdom.

The Queensland health department said genomic sequencing confirmed this case was linked to a case earlier this month — a doctor at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital who tested positive on March 12 after treating a COVID-positive returned traveller a few days earlier.

We hoped we’d escaped an outbreak as a result of that case, but this shows you can never be too vigilant when it comes to COVID-19. The genomic linkage tells us at least one case slipped through the contact-tracing net.

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The UK variant is likely deadlier, more infectious and becoming dominant. But the vaccines still work well against it

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The 26-year-old reportedly developed symptoms last Monday (March 22), but only sought a test on Thursday (March 25).

Given what we know about the infectious period of the virus, health authorities deemed he could have been infectious a couple of days before that. They’ve released exposure sites from March 20 onwards.

But although we’re told he’s linked to the hospital case, we don’t know exactly how. It’s important we have this information to identify others who may be at risk.

The time it takes to develop symptoms after exposure (the incubation period) is usually around five to six days. The time lapsed between the hospital case (who was exposed on March 9) and this one (likely exposed on March 16 or 17) suggests there may be one or more missing links.

After this man tested positive, health authorities rightly tested his close contacts — not only with PCR testing to identify current infections, but with serology testing. This picks up antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to indicate if someone has recovered from the virus. We call this an upstream search. The man’s brother returned a positive serological result.

Could this brother be the missing link? Reports suggest authorities believe he is — but there’s a vagueness about the nature of the link, and also about where the brother had been while he was infectious.

It’s helpful to have the genomic link back to the Princess Alexandra Hospital incident so we know where to look to unpack the full outbreak picture. But genomics alone don’t tell us whether the brother was a direct exposure — for example, whether he visited the hospital at that time or had some other connection with the doctor who was infected — or whether there are more intermediary cases to be found.

Although he’s now recovered, it’s still important we ascertain precisely where he got the virus, and his movements while he was potentially infectious. If we can’t link him to the hospital in any way beyond the genomic test results, we’re still essentially looking at a mystery case.

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Read more:
How the latest COVID cases slipped through in NSW and Queensland — and what we can do better

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The second case reported on Saturday, a 20-year-old man from Strathpine in the Moreton Bay region north of Brisbane, is also a direct contact of the 26-year-old man. He is currently COVID-positive and could have been infected at the same time.

Today we had two more cases linked to that cluster: work colleagues of the Strathpine case.

And importantly, we now have two other community cases that have not at this stage been epidemiologically linked to this cluster — a nurse who has worked on the COVID ward at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and her sister.

The health department is waiting on genomics to confirm they are “linked”. But it’s essential we understand the epidemiological connection, not just the genomic similarity of strains.

So what now?

In addition to the fact the chains of transmission haven’t been mapped out clearly, we’ve also seen some mixed messages over recent days.

Reports the Strathpine man held a house party while waiting for his test results were later retracted. Little things like this mean there’s an element of confusion at a time when it’s essential public messaging is clear.

These “circuit-breaker” lockdowns have been positioned as a safety net allowing contact tracers to get on top of cases before they become larger outbreaks. They must be implemented quickly to work, and we now wait and see whether this one has been imposed quickly enough.

I believe health authorities will be able to bring this outbreak under control in the coming days. But we also need to ask the question: how did it come to this?

The fact we’re contending with this latest cluster at all indicates the follow-up after the hospital case earlier this month wasn’t sufficient; an outbreak was insidiously unfolding under the radar. At least one person who was exposed was able to fall through the cracks. This is an issue Queensland health authorities will need to review, and other states and territories can learn from.

Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Brisbane’s COVID lockdown has a crucial difference: it aims to squash an outbreak before it even starts

Catherine Bennett, Deakin University

Greater Brisbane’s 72-hour COVID lockdown, which takes effect at 6pm on Friday, has a crucial difference from the months-long lockdown endured by Melbourne earlier this year, or the current restrictions aimed at stamping out Sydney’s COVID clusters.

In Brisbane’s case, it’s just a circuit-breaker designed to immediately minimise everyone’s number of close contacts until we can establish whether anyone has caught the virus from the one known case: a hotel quarantine cleaner who was moving around in the community for five days before testing positive yesterday.

Melbourne’s lockdown, in contrast, was about suppressing viral transmission from cases that numbered in the thousands and where workplaces were the main driver of spread. That meant isolating everyone until the continual seeding back into the community could be stopped.

Brisbane’s shorter lockdown allows health authorities to find and test anyone who might, for instance, have been on public transport with the one woman we know has been infected so far.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said authorities were aiming to “go hard and go early”, given the infected woman is known to have contracted the more infectious UK mutant strain of the coronavirus.

This is why the announcement has been prompt: the time frame for circuit-breakers must be short but the list of allowable reasons for leaving the house is relatively generous to compensate. Besides the usual essentials such as shopping, health care and exercise, it also includes attending workplaces when working from home is impractical, and going to weddings and funerals (with restricted numbers) because people may have immediate plans they cannot change.

That said, the panic-buying witnessed in Brisbane’s shops today is really disappointing. The shops will still be open, you can still shop as one of your reasons to leave home, and everyone crowding into shops at the start of lockdown actually increases the risk of infection.

We’ve seen how these things play out – the empty shelves and toilet paper shortages. We wouldn’t wish Melbourne’s situation on anybody, but they have shown it is possible to live with lockdown. It’s actually the panic-buying that causes the shortages in supply. But it just seems to be an instinctive human reaction that can’t be prevented.

Does it matter that the ‘UK superstrain’ is involved here?

The protocol for handling a situation like this should be the same regardless of whether the “UK superstrain” is involved or not.

With a low number of cases, it doesn’t make much of a difference which variant is responsible. It would make a difference if case numbers climbed or the virus got into workplaces and began to get a foothold in the community. Then, the fact this strain spreads more rapidly would become a danger.

The fact that Melbourne’s lockdown successfully suppressed within a matter of weeks a new “mutant” strain with some of the same genetic changes as the UK variant, while the variant responsible for more than 99% of the second wave was a supposedly less infectious strain, shows that what matters most is the how the epidemic seeds, where transmission is established and how it is controlled, not just the COVID strain itself.

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Finally at zero new cases, Victoria is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

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Brisbane’s current situation does show the value of more frequent testing of hotel quarantine staff. When we had the Adelaide outbreak, I advocated for daily testing, or testing on each shift, to be the national testing standard for all workers on the quarantine frontline. The Victorian government has already applied it, and National Cabinet has now established this as the the national standard.

With more frequent testing, we wouldn’t have the situation we have in Queensland. Instead, the woman who is believed to have been infectious since January 2 would have tested positive on her last shift that day, rather than when she developed symptoms several days later. This would have removed the risks associated with her subsequent movements in the community.

Testing times for air passengers

National Cabinet has also announced a series of new measures aimed at reducing the risks associated with air travel and the potential arrival of COVID cases among returned travellers.

All passengers will be required to test negative before boarding a flight to Australia, and masks will be mandatory on all international and domestic flights and inside airports.

Testing positive for a test completes within 72 hours of a flight will rule that passenger, and any of their household contacts, from boarding the flight. This is a good way of taking the pressure off our returnee quarantine process, although it will not eliminate the risk entirely. It is still possible passengers or crew will bring the virus into Australia as some may still be incubating an infection when in transit.

While it’s impossible to rule out that positive cases will arrive among returned travellers, particularly from the UK, it will undoubtedly reduce the proportion of arrivals who are positive, and PCR testing is much more reliable than screening for symptoms.

Mandatory masks are also a sensible idea – many passengers were already wearing them so this about making it mandatory and consistent across all carriers. If you don’t have the virus, the last thing you want is to contract it on the plane.

Border closures still a blunt tool

While Brisbane’s lockdown covers a sizeable area of Queensland’s southeast, wholesale border closures — such as Western Australia’s new decision to bar arrivals from Queensland — is overkill.

We must be able to manage our response to this pandemic nationally. This is not the time for states to be saying “our processes are better than yours”. Instead, we should have a coordinated process, so if you have cases arriving in your state, we can all work together to manage it.

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Read more:
Australia’s mishmash of COVID border closures is confusing, inconsistent and counterproductive

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Closing the border to travellers from specific hotpots: yes. That’s how you manage risk. But doing it beyond the hotspots, especially if there aren’t even any known exposure sites outside the hotspot, seems unnecessary and counterproductive, especially in the context of a circuit-breaker compared with evidence of unknown community transmission.

Hard border closures bring a host of health and economic consequences.

Masks mean you can reduce transmission risk, keep borders open and contain local clusters that start before you know the virus has landed in your area – masks are absolutely the way to go. It’s just something you can put in your pocket, and authorities can step the rules up and down as required. True, we will see more clusters, but they will likely be smaller and contained more promptly.

Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australian Politics: 20 August 2013

Australia: Floods – Brisbane River Boating Escape

Australia: Floods Report – 16th January 2011

Flooding continues throughout eastern Australia while floodwaters recede in some areas.

Australian Floods: Queensland – Latest News

The flood crisis in the state of Queensland in Australia has worsened again today, with confirmation of eight deaths and about 72 people missing in the Queensland town of Toowombah and surrounding areas following the severe flash floods yesterday. In towns below Toowombah, homes and buildings were hit with a 7 metre wall of water, leaving a trail of destruction and death.

In recent hours that area affected by secere flooding had spread widely and rapidly, including the Queensland capital of Brisbane and now also throughout southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. The next 48 hours is likely to see significant and major escalations in flooding throughout New South Wales and Queensland, including northern Queensland.

At the moment the major areas of concern include Ipswich, Brisbane and surrounding areas in Queensland, as well as Kempsey, Tenterfield, Belligen and Grafton in New South Wales. Many areas already flooded several times in recent weeks are again threatened by renewed secere flooding. There are many, many areas now severely affected in both states. A major weather system in now moving into affected areas.

Hung Parliament Likely in Australian Federal Election

Greens and Independents to Hold Balance of Power in Both Houses

It would seem that the likely outcome of the 2010 federal election in Australia is that of a hung parliament, with government going to the party that gains the support of one or two possible Greens members of parliament in the lower house, and three other independent members of parliament in the lower house. It seems likely that the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate.

The Greens have now clearly become the third major political party behind the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party (Lib) – National Party (Nat) coalition. They have now gained a representative in the lower house with the seat of Melbourne in Victoria falling to Adam Bandt. It is possible that the seat of Grayndler in New South wales (NSW) could also fall to the Greens, with ALP member Anthony Albanese in a close fight with Sam Byrne of the Greens.

The three other certain independents, all former National Party members, are Bob Katter (Kennedy – Queensland, Tony Windsor (New England – NSW) and Rob Oakeshott (Lyne – NSW)

The ALP has also lost large numbers of seats in Queensland ( QLD – Flynn, Leichhardt, Forde, Bonner, Dickson, Herbert, Longman, Brisbane and Dawson) and seats in NSW (Bennelong, Macarthur, Macquarie and Gilmore), one in the Northern Territory (Solomon), one in Western Australia (Hasluck) and possibly one in Tasmania (Denison) to independent Andrew Wilkie. It would seem that a total of 18 or 19 seats have been lost by the ALP. They have gained two in Victoria, winning La Trobe and McEwan.

The ALP’s greatest hope would seem to be the seat of Boothby in South Australia, which still appears too close too call. At this stage Denison in Tasmania remains an ALP seat, but it also remains too close to call.

It seems to me that there will be 73 seats to the ALP (possibly 72 if Grayndler falls to the Greens in NSW), 73 seats to the Coalition, one seat to the Greens (possibly 2 if they pick up Grayndler in NSW – who would lean to the ALP) and 3 to the Independents (all formerly National Party members who would likely lean to the Coalition). If these predictions prove to be true, it would seem that the Coalition will be able to form a minority government with the support of the Independents.

After the promise of the ALP in the previous election and the result that occured, the ALP should have held office for at least two terms. However, the ALP has failed to deliver and instead gave Australia a very lazy, poor and mediocre government. Under Kevin Rudd the ALP successfully steered Australia through the financial crisis, for which Australians should be very thankful. However, there has also been poor management of ecomomic stimulus projects, environmental issues and other projects, which have left many Australians disillusioned with the government. This of course led to the downfall of Kevin Rudd prior to the election and the elevation of Julia Gillard to the Prime Ministership of the country. This was too little too late to save the ALP from electoral disaster and the Australian people have delivered swift punishment for their failure to deliver what we had hoped for under the Kevin Rudd led ALP government.

Perhaps the experience of a hung parliament and a minority government, from whichever side of politics, will result in someone or some party standing up with a real commitment to governance and leadership in Australia. At the moment there seems little of both and the Australian people are largely disillusioned with both major parties. The ALP should prepare itself for major defeats in state elections over the next couple of years, especially in New South Wales and Queensland, where voters are fed up with poor government – not that the alternatives are much better.

How an Australian-born pastor survived a Molotov cocktail

Wayne Zschech, the Australian-born pastor of Calvary Chapel Kaharlyk, just south of Kiev in Ukraine with a population 15,000, says he will never forget the events that took place in the early hours of Wednesday, October 14th, when attackers smashed a window at the church building, where he and his family live, and threw a Molotov cocktail (petrol bomb) into the building, reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.

In an interview he gave me during my recent visit to Kiev, he re-lived the horrifying turn of events that could have caused the deaths of himself and his family as they slept.

“It all started when my wife Olya woke up in the morning to feed the newborn baby and she said she could smell smoke,” said Wayne. “We actually live in the church building and that night, there were six of us (including his mother-in-law) who were sleeping. We had actually sent the kids to school at eight o’clock in the morning and my wife said again that she could ‘really smell smoke.’ So we looked out the back window and there was smoke billowing out of the back of the church.

“Suddenly, it was all hands on deck. I called the fire brigade and then started finding where the fire was coming from. We originally thought that it was an electrical short because it’s an old building. I began opening up all the doors – because I didn’t want the fire brigade knocking them down – and looking in the basement trying to find where the fire was coming from.

“I kept going down into the basement and when I came up for air on the third or fourth occasion, I just happened to walk around the side of the building and suddenly the whole situation became clear. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the side of the building into our children’s ministry room and had also left spray painted markings on the side of the building saying, ‘Get out of here, you sectarians.’ So suddenly it put a big a whole new spin on the situation.”

I asked Wayne if he had ever experienced trouble before and he replied, “Not directly. We’ve had a couple of youths smashing windows and so we had to put security screens on our apartment, but nothing like this. There was no warning.”

Sitting next to Pastor Zschech was his assistant pastor, American-born Micah Claycamp, who is married with four children, who then described what he saw when he arrived at the church that morning.

“I had come to the church to do a language lesson and, as I walked in, I saw a big hose running from the back of the church into the room that had been firebombed and I could smell smoke,” he said. “They had just finished cleaning everything up and I went around to the side of the building and saw what had been spray painted and started talking to Wayne who had got the situation figured out and he told me what exactly had happened.

“This was the first big thing we’ve seen in our town. It is pretty quiet for the most part. I don’t feel threatened living there but this obviously is a situation that is a lot different and when you walk into something like this it makes you appreciate the things that you see God do, the unseen things. It makes you realize how much God protects our lives in ways you don’t see every day. So it just makes you more appreciative of His protection.”

I then asked Wayne how an Australian from Brisbane whose family hailed from the Prussian part of Germany finished up in a small town in Ukraine.

“Well, to be perfectly honest, I think God played a trick on me,” he smiled. “I graduated from school and wanted to get into the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and when I applied for the Australian Defence Force Academy I got the chickenpox and so they didn’t let me in that year, even though my academic achievements were fine.

“So I quickly did a deal with God and said, ‘I’ll give you a year of my life’ and the next thing I knew three months later I was in Ukraine and started a Bible-based English schooling programs in communist government schools where kids were learning about Jesus. I was just seventeen years old at the time and began travelling all over the country and I’ve been here ever since. That is some sixteen and a half years now.”

Had he seen big changes in the country?

“Yes, many changes,” he said. “We’ve had currency changes and also seen mindset changes. We see economic things going on and we’ve learned a lot of things. But along the way, I found a beautiful Ukrainian girl and we have a wonderful marriage and we have three Ukrainian kids.”

Wayne then spoke about how he got involved in this Calvary Chapel.

“Well, I got tricked also into becoming the pastor of this church in what was then a village,” he said. “The founding pastor who moved with me from Kiev to Kaharlyk went back home to Australia to do his deputation work and a couple months later, he wrote me an email saying that he was ‘not returning to be the pastor of the church.’ He added, ‘So congratulations. You’re the pastor.’ So not only did I become a missionary by hook or by crook but also became a pastor and I’m thrilled.

“I never wanted to be those things but God has turned things around totally and I’m absolutely content and happy and it’s a very exciting life to see what God is doing despite the fact that humans would have had other choices.”

I then asked Wayne what Kaharlyk was like when he first arrived.

“We are about 80 kilometers (nearly 50 miles) south of Kiev and it was a town that had been in economic ruin as most of the country had been after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he said. “Unemployment was rife. There were no jobs, no income and there was lots of mental and cultural baggage as the country was trying to reacclimatize to the real world situation.

“Now some 12 years later, we’re basically on the outskirts of Kiev although obviously the town hasn’t moved geographically. But it’s a thriving little town. It hasn’t grown numerically that much but you can definitely see there are changes. There are people moving out of Kiev to come and live in our town. That was never in our plan and we’re also seeing bits of investment coming in and things like that show what was once basically dead is now starting to show signs of life.”

I then asked him to describe the types of people who attended his church.

“We’re a young church and we’re different from the mainstream Orthodox and older style Baptist churches,” Wayne explained. “But the truth is that we are reaching out to orphans, to the elderly and we have a beautiful mix of all those generations in between. When you see a grandmother coming with her son and her grandson to church, you see the wholesomeness that the Gospel brings when God enters a family’s life.

“Back in the early days everyone was warned about people like us saying that these are the people ‘you’ve been warned about for all those years’ and that ‘they’ve come here to hypnotize you and take all your money.’ But that was more then based out of ignorance.

“We had an Orthodox priest back then and we had some very serious chats with him and he said, ‘Look publicly, I have to hold the government line or the Orthodox line, but personally I see that you’re a brother in Christ. So that was good. I wouldn’t call that major persecution, but I can understand the fear from their side.”

He then spoke about a unique business he has begun in the town.

“We decided that we had to become producers so people can put bread on the table and we have to show how God is in everything,” said Wayne. “So we have started a little mushroom-growing enterprise and now we’re making biodiesel. We actually collect oil from a number of restaurants, including McDonald’s Ukraine, and we make biodiesel and sell it and save money for the church and make money for the church and employ people and reinvest into the local town.”

Micah then said that he runs his car on biodiesel which he says smells like “fried chicken.”

“I can run it and I haven’t had any problems at all,” he said. “It’s also cheaper and I’ve put advertisements on the van to let people know the phone numbers so that people know what’s going on.”

It was Micah that picked me up at the Kiev (Borispol) Airport and drove me to my hotel and I have to confess that I didn’t catch a whiff of fried chicken from the exhaust of the van, though I did have a bad cold at the time.

I concluded by returning to the topic of the firebombing and asked Wayne if he had further thoughts about it.

“As soon as we discovered that it was intentional, you can just imagine the situation in your mind with totally charged different emotions,” he said. “We were targeted from the side of the building so that everyone in the town walking past it could see the damage and the spray painting.

“It was basically a political statement in that respect. The fact that the family was asleep in the building when it happened my mother in-law was staying at the time and she said that she heard some banging around at five o’clock in the morning and we looked at the fire damage and we see that it was a real a miracle. There was a fire but the damage was minimal. It should have been so much worse. What turned out to be a couple thousand dollars worth of damage when we could have lost the whole room.

“If they, for some, reason had chosen another window to throw it in, just the next window, the floor boards are totally bear there we don’t have thick linoleum on them, so the fire would have spread immediately. There’s a big air gap right under those boards and it runs right to our family’s bedrooms.”

I concluded by asking Wayne what his prayer needs were at this time.

“That Christ would be glorified to the maximum through this and the next circumstances and that He would save people and that the Christian body locally and throughout the world would pray harder to understanding the privileges that we have in our situations and that God can change them any time that He wants.”

Micah then added his prayer request: “That our church would grow together in this as they would see that God allows these things to happen to strengthen the body, to cause our eyes to be back upon Him and that for His glory to be done and bring more people to Christ.”

By the way if the name Zschech rings a bell with you, he is related to Darlene Zschech, who is perhaps most famous for the chorus "Shout to the Lord," a song that is sung by an estimated 25 to 30 million churchgoers every week, who has married in the Zschech family. “I was a Zschech first,” laughed Wayne.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

AUSTRALIA: CYCLONE HAMISH UPDATE – 8th March 2009

Cyclone Hamish is continuing to track parallel down the Queensland coast and thus far there have been no reports of injuries or major damage. Damaging winds can now be expected between Mackay and Bundaberg with the storm currently located to the north-east of Mackay.

The cyclone has been downgraded from a category 5 cyclone to a category 4 cyclone. The storm is massive and will still cause major damage should it cross the coast on Tuesday as forecast. The cyclone is generating winds of up to 260 km per hour.

Lady Elliot, Heron and Fraser Islands are all being evacuated as the cyclone heads in their direction. It is thought that the Hervey Bay area is the likely area the cyclone will fully impact on, with its remnant reaching possibly Brisbane.