Brisbane devastated as Australia watches floods advance

BRISBANE residents were waiting yesterday for flood- waters to recede and reveal the extent of devastation to Australia's third-largest city, while soldiers picked their way through the debris of flood-ravaged towns looking for victims from one of the country's worst natural disasters.

• The swollen Brisbane river and the skyline of the city where 30,000 homes and businesses were swamped by floodwater. Below: A man paddles to safety. Picture: Getty

The slow-motion inundation of Brisbane overnight - played out live on television before a nation transfixed - was a critical moment in flooding that has built for weeks as rain fell incessantly across the country's tropical north-east.

The emergency is not over, but Brisbane's escape from what forecasters had predicted would be a flood worse than one that laid waste to much of the city 37 years ago triggered relief nationwide.

The death toll stood at 25, including a 24-year-old man who drowned yesterday when he was sucked into a storm drain as he tried to check on his father's home. Officials said they expected to find more bodies farther upstream as they gained access to areas struck by flash flooding on Monday.

The floodwaters began to recede yesterday after cresting three feet below the depth of 1974 floods that swept through Brisbane. Still, 30,000 homes and business were swamped.

"Queensland is reeling this morning from the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation," a visibly shaken state premier Anna Bligh told reporters. "We've seen three-quarters of our state having experienced the devastation of raging floodwaters and we now face a reconstruction task of post-war proportions."

The flooding has submerged dozens of towns - some three times - and left an area the size of Germany and France combined under water.

At least 61 people are still missing, most of them from around Toowoomba, the city west of Brisbane that saw massive flash floods on Monday. Fourteen died in that flood alone.

With decent access to the region between Brisbane and Toowoomba for the first time, more than 200 police and soldiers fanned out across the stricken Lockyer Valley in buses, helicopters and amphibious military vehicles.

At Postmans Ridge, about 55 miles west of Brisbane, two dozen soldiers wearing jungle camouflage uniforms and police in dark overalls picked their way through large trees flattened along a creek banks and a floodplain strewn with debris. Lorry trailers lay broken in two, boats were crushed and the body of a horse was wedged between a downed tree and the sodden ground.

Nearby, Barry and Catherine Bull boiled potatoes and cooked rump steak given to them by a neighbour over a gas-fired camp stove set up outside their house, built of brick and one of few left standing around them.

All that remained of the neighbour's wood-framed house was a concrete slab. A car was suspended in the sagging branches of a tree.

They fear the elderly woman across the street is one of the people for whom the soldiers are searching.

"One of the neighbours went to get her, got her out of the house, but she went back for the dog," Mrs Bull said. "That was the last anyone saw of her."Despite the chaos, many in Brisbane were thankful the river through the city had spared them the worst of its fury.

Lisa Sully, in the suburb of Sherwood, had some water in her home, but still felt lucky. "I can handle this," she said. "Mentally, I was prepared for worse."