Australia floods threaten Queensland capital; 14 dead, dozens missing
The city of Brisbane braces for major damage from flooding and the massive release of water from a dam. In the town of Toowoomba, ‘a wall of water’ takes a heavy toll.
Residents of Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city, braced Wednesday for potentially monumental flooding as a river overflowed its banks from a combination of rain, runoff and the forced release of large amounts of water from a dam that had been designed to protect the city from raging storms.
At least 40,000 properties were expected to be affected by the overflowing Brisbane River, as water let out of the Wivenhoe Dam to the north bore down on the city at a rate of 7,000 cubic meters a second. A massive surge of water from the northern hinterlands overwhelmed the dam, built in the late 1970s after devastating 1974 floods, and the water was released to prevent its collapse.
Flood-strained banks reach breaking point
Rising water could threaten hundreds of properties in Victoria’s north as flooding in the state worsens.
Almost the entire state has been affected, from east to west, forcing more than 300 people to leave their homes since Saturday, closing dozens of roads and leaving about 6,000 homes without power.
Dozens of residents of Wangaratta, including Linda McConnell and her family, have been told to evacuate due to a second weak point in the levee bank along the King River.
“We were evacuated last night. The creek’s right in front of our house. The police came at two o’clock this morning and evacuated us,” she said.
“They reckon it’s going to rise five metres, they told me last night, which will bring it right up to my front door.
“We just took the cat and valuable stuff and put everything up as high as we could. Pretty amazing to think that it would come that far, but that’s really scary because if it does come up, we can’t go home.”
In Apex Park in central Wangaratta, the Ovens River has crept across hundreds of metres of grassland and walking paths. The children’s playground, which is usually uphill from the river, is now in it.