Death toll rises to eight, 70 missing as flash floods strike Queensland

EIGHT people are dead and at least 70 more are missing after "unprecedented" flooding hit southeast Queensland with a wall of water devastating the city of Toowoomba.

A car is winched to safety from a torrent of water during a flash flood in the southern Queensland city of Toowoomba. Picture: Lucy Robertson-Cuninghame

EIGHT people are dead and at least 70 more are missing after "unprecedented" flooding hit southeast Queensland with a wall of water devastating the city of Toowoomba.

Others are stranded on rooftops waiting for rescues while flooding continues to batter the south east corner of the state.

“We now have confirmation of eight dead, including the death of young children,” Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told Sky News.

“We do have unconfirmed reports of potentially other loss of life, but at this stage the official confirmation of dead is eight. But I do expect that we might see that toll rise through out the day. So these are shocking and heartbreaking circumstances,” she said.

The Premier also said she had confirmation that 11 people were missing from the Murphy’s Creek area near Toowoomba and described the flooding as “supernatural”.

A woman and a boy were found dead in the Toowoomba CBD and a man and a boy were killed at Murphys Creek after a massive body of water from weeks of heavy rain tore through Toowoomba, 125km west of Brisbane.

The premier described the incident as an “unfolding human tragedy”.

“We are very likely to hear of more confirmations of missing people in the next couple of hours,” she said.

The destruction in Toowoomba marked a dramatic escalation of the flood crisis that has gripped much of Queensland since Christmas, causing billions of dollars in damage and stripping billions more from the resource and agriculture industries through lost production.

Toowoomba mayor Peter Taylor said this morning the flash flooding that swept through the Queensland city could not have been planned for and was “unprecedented”.

“No-one’s ever seen anything like this,” he said.

“It’s been called an inland tsunami. Just, no-one could have prepared more than we were prepared for it.

“People had little warning because it was just such an extreme event. It rained so intensely for a very short period of time and just caused a massive almost inland tidal wave…. It’s not been seen before ever. So that’s why this occurred. Just absolutely extreme rainfall.

“In fact we’re having storms again this morning but not at the same level as we had yesterday for an hour or two. It just rained absolutely intensely and that level of rainfall has never been seen in the city before and I guess could never be planned for,” he said.

Police urged up to 5000 people to flee their homes last night, warning of a "7m wall of water" as the flood surged into the Lockyer Valley, east of Toowoomba.

Lockyer Valley Mayor Steve Jones said the town of Withcott, about 10km east of Toowoomba, looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb or Cyclone Tracy after the surge passed through, while Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson described Toowoomba and the area beneath it as having been hit by an "inland instant tsunami".

Thirty people were last night said to be "isolated" in the Grantham area, at the base of the Toowoomba range, many of them in a primary school.

Police also warned that another "severe weather event", of a force similar to the storm that struck Toowoomba yesterday, was heading for the Sunshine Coast and the Esk area, northwest of Brisbane.

Forecasters warned Brisbane residents to prepare for the city's biggest flood since 1974, after more than 300mm of rain fell in parts of the Brisbane River catchment in the 24 hours to yesterday afternoon.

Liberal Frontbencher Ian Macfarlane who has his electorate office in Toowoomba said the damage to the city would run into the hundreds of millions.

“The water [was] rushing in blowing the windows out, taking the floor stock down the creek. Of course cars that are parked, some of them in council car parks, were just lifted up and bobbing along in a stream and then jamming up against bridges.”

“Certainly, in the last week and a half, we’ve had almost our annual rainfall so everything was very wet. This storm came, 60mm in 60 minutes. Unprecedented rain and it just literally fell out of the sky. It got funnelled into the centre of town… and unfortunately has done horrific damage.

“It has left an incredible trail of devastation. And property damage, road damage, rail damage - I think we will be talking hundreds of millions of dollars just in the CBD alone.”

Greens Leader Bob Brown said today his heart went out to those who had lost friends and loved ones in the Queensland floods.

“I and my fellow Greens join people right across Australia in offering our condolences to the people and communities who have lost friends and loved ones,” he said.

“Our thoughts are also with the rescue workers in their essential tasks they are undertaking in remarkably difficult conditions.”

“We wish Queenslanders as speedy a recovery as possible from the wild weather that is besetting them.”

with staff reporters