Residents of Queensland’s Maryborough fear more disaster from killer floods

With a man dead and a girl missing, the town of Maryborough was bracing for severe flooding on Sunday night, after wild weather.

A house is seen surrounded by flood waters from the Mary River in the town of Tiaro, 198km north of Brisbane as wild weekend weather takes its toll Picture: AAP

A man has died, a 14-year-old girl is missing, and the Queensland town of Maryborough was bracing on Sunday night for severe flooding after a wild weekend of weather whipped up by the remnants of Cyclone Seth.

The weather system flooded several towns and cut the Bruce Highway north of the Sunshine Coast as it crossed the coast near Hervey Bay on Friday.

Swollen rivers continued to rise on Sunday while another cyclone threat loomed over the north Queensland coastline.

A vaunted $6m temporary levee bank, designed to stop the Maryborough CBD from flooding, failed on Sunday, causing a mass evacuation and fears shops and homes would be inundated.

A tropical low about 300km offshore from Coen, on the east coast of Cape York, intensified into a cyclone late on Sunday and was expected to cross the coast on Tuesday morning.

Named Tiffany, the cyclone had authorities on high alert following the destruction wrought by Seth over the weekend.

Emergency services crews were still searching for a 14-year-old girl who was separated from her travelling companion when their car was swept away by floodwater early Saturday morning.

Flooding of the Mary River ar Maryborough. Picture: Facebook Kylie Taylor

The pair managed to escape the Toyota Camry sedan before it was washed off the road near the Burnett Highway at Booubyjan, 250km northwest of Brisbane, where about 650mm of rain fell in 24 hours to Saturday morning.

The man, 40, was rescued about 12.30pm on Saturday when he was found clinging to a tree surrounded by surging floodwater.

He was taken to Bundaberg Hospital for treatment while authorities began a search for the girl on the ground and in the air.

Their efforts were hampered by the inundated roads and extreme weather conditions.

In a separate incident, a 22-year-old Sunshine Coast man died when his ute was swept off the road and into floodwater on Friday night.

The torrential rain stopped by Sunday morning but Maryborough residents spent most of the day bracing for a 10.5m flood peak in the Mary River on Sunday afternoon, which would have inundated about 80 homes.

The town’s specially designed temporary levee bank, built for $6m in 2017 to withstand an 11m surge, stumbled at its first test when an underground valve broke and the rising floodwater burst through a storm drain and inundated the dry side of the makeshift bank.

Flooding of the Mary River in Maryborough. Picture: David Crisafulli MP

The problem prompted an evacuation of the CBD as authorities feared businesses would be inundated.

Fraser Coast councillor Paul Truscott, whose division covers the town of Maryborough, described the scene as giant generators and pumps were hauled in to pump water away from the leaking stormwater drain.

“Something has damaged the underground gate and it’s allowed the floodwater to drain into the side that should be staying dry,” Mr Truscott said.

“We’re trying to pump it out but the water’s still coming through.”

Mr Truscott said he hoped the peak of the flood, predicted for about 6pm, would be less than forecast and that the pumps could prevent the leaked water from swelling over the sandbags – filled by prisoners at the district’s correctional centre – that had been laid in front of shops and houses.

The towns of Goomeri, Kilkivan and Woolooga were put on flood alert, while other towns were expected to be cut off for up to three days as local rivers and creeks swelled.

Cyclone Tiffany was not expected to cause widespread damage as it crossed Cape York into the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned residents in Kowanyama, Mapoon and Weipa to monitor the cyclone as the threat increased.