BRISBANE – Australia’s third-biggest city Brisbane was besieged on Wednesday by the worst floods in decades, threatening more than 30,000 homes as the death toll in the raging torrents rose to 12.
Thousands of people fled to higher ground and Brisbane’s centre was a “ghost town” as the river city of two million battened down for its worst deluge in decades, as deadly floods inundate vast areas of Australia’s northeast. Power was cut to tens of thousands of premises and some residents headed to evacuation centres as boats and floating restaurants broke their moorings and careered down the swollen Brisbane River, smashing into bridges. More than 50 suburbs and 2,100 roads are expected to be left under water as the Brisbane River bursts its banks and swamps the city centre, along with other areas.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the number of people missing in the floods had fallen from 51 to 43, but that the official death toll remained at 12, with grave fears for nine of the missing. Australian news agency AAP said the death toll did not include the discovery of a body in Ipswich, a town upstream from Brisbane. The Ipswich mayor was quoted as saying the body of a man in his 50s had been found in a car.
While the river was continuing to rise, it was no longer expected to peak at 5.5 metres, but top out at 5.2 metres around 4:00 am on Thursday (1800 GMT Wednesday) – lower than the levels reached in the last major floods in 1974 and those of 1893.
Bligh warned that “we are bracing for a massive amount of water coming into this river system and it will flood thousands of properties”, but said she believed that region would “recover very quickly”.
“We accept for many it’ll be a long slow road but getting our economy back and ticking quickly is one of the first priorities of the taskforce that is already working on recovery,” she said. Damage was intense, with witnesses spotting entire houses in the river. The military considered scuttling a landmark ferry and a well-known restaurant that were in danger of floating away. City authorities said about 20,000 homes will be completely flooded with another 12,000 partially affected.
“We expect the CBD (central business district) of our capital city to be looking and feeling a lot like a ghost town around about now,” said Bligh. Prime Minister Julia Gillard called the disaster’s scale “mind-boggling”, but urged people to help their neighbours during the city’s worst emergency since the 1974 floods. “If there’s someone in your street you’re worried about, maybe an older Australian that you haven’t seen for a while, maybe give them a knock on the door and make sure they’re okay,” Gillard said.
Brisbane, the cosmopolitan state capital and economic hub, is the latest and biggest victim of floods caused by months of rains that have turned three-quarters of Queensland into a disaster zone twice the size of Texas. Panic-buying stripped supermarket shelves of essential supplies and the downtown 52,500-capacity Suncorp Stadium resembled a giant swimming pool, while the XXXX brewery closed its doors. Garbage collections and bus services were cancelled, traffic lights were out of action and Brisbane’s port was open only for emergency supplies. Sewage from flooded homes spilled into the gathering torrents.
Isolated ATM cash machines were running out of money and residents were told to conserve drinking water in case supplies are cut. More than 1,000 people jammed evacuation centres in nearby Ipswich, where 3,000 homes were deluged. Rural Condamine was evacuated for the second time, along with two towns in neighbouring state New South Wales.
