12,000 homes swamped by massive flooding in Brisbane
Source: Agencies |
January 14, 2011, Friday
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FLOODS left parts of the Australian city of Brisbane looking like a war zone in need of years of reconstruction, the state premier said yesterday, while fresh threats loomed with a cyclone forecast offshore.
The floods across the state of -Queensland have killed at least 19 people, 12 of whom died in the Toowoomba area inland, and 61 were missing, the state government said.
Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley region, west of state capital Brisbane, were devastated by tsunami-like flash flooding on Monday.
Large parts of Brisbane have become muddy lakes, with an entire waterfront cafe among the debris washing down the Brisbane River, a torrent that has flooded 12,000 homes in the city of 2 million and left 118,000 buildings without power.
Aerial views of Brisbane showed a sea of brown water with rooftops poking through the surface.
"What I'm seeing looks more like a war zone in some places," Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told reporters after surveying the disaster from the air. "All I could see was their rooftops ... underneath every single one of those rooftops is a horror story."
Floodwaters in 35 suburbs, which yesterday peaked below disastrous levels predicted a day earlier, forced residents to take to boats to move about the streets, where traffic signs peeped above the water.
The floodwaters destroyed or damaged many parts of the city's infrastructure. One group of residents was lucky not to disappear into gushing waters when the street they were walking along collapsed.
"The ground started to move and began to rumble like thunder. We all started to run as fast as we could," said Rebecca Bush. "The next -minute we heard this huge cracking noise that sounded like lightning had just struck. We turned around and the pathway was gone. It had -completely collapsed."
An emotional Bligh said her state, reliant on farming and mining in rugged outback regions, would recover regardless of the cost and estimates that three quarters of it - an area the size of South Africa - was now -officially a disaster zone.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast that a storm in the Coral Sea off Queensland's north coast would become a cyclone in 24 to 48 hours, but while it would bring fresh rains to Queensland, it was expected to move away from the coast.
The floods across the state of -Queensland have killed at least 19 people, 12 of whom died in the Toowoomba area inland, and 61 were missing, the state government said.
Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley region, west of state capital Brisbane, were devastated by tsunami-like flash flooding on Monday.
Large parts of Brisbane have become muddy lakes, with an entire waterfront cafe among the debris washing down the Brisbane River, a torrent that has flooded 12,000 homes in the city of 2 million and left 118,000 buildings without power.
Aerial views of Brisbane showed a sea of brown water with rooftops poking through the surface.
"What I'm seeing looks more like a war zone in some places," Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told reporters after surveying the disaster from the air. "All I could see was their rooftops ... underneath every single one of those rooftops is a horror story."
Floodwaters in 35 suburbs, which yesterday peaked below disastrous levels predicted a day earlier, forced residents to take to boats to move about the streets, where traffic signs peeped above the water.
The floodwaters destroyed or damaged many parts of the city's infrastructure. One group of residents was lucky not to disappear into gushing waters when the street they were walking along collapsed.
"The ground started to move and began to rumble like thunder. We all started to run as fast as we could," said Rebecca Bush. "The next -minute we heard this huge cracking noise that sounded like lightning had just struck. We turned around and the pathway was gone. It had -completely collapsed."
An emotional Bligh said her state, reliant on farming and mining in rugged outback regions, would recover regardless of the cost and estimates that three quarters of it - an area the size of South Africa - was now -officially a disaster zone.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast that a storm in the Coral Sea off Queensland's north coast would become a cyclone in 24 to 48 hours, but while it would bring fresh rains to Queensland, it was expected to move away from the coast.
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