Airlie Beach residents look at a boat that was washed up on the rocks after heavy rains, the remnants of Tropical Storm Oswald, caused major flooding and damage across coastal Queensland. Photo: Reuters
Matthew Cranston and AAP
Car flooded at Clayfield
Yacht/catamaran washed up at middle park beach
Eagle St at high tide, around 10pm Sunday evening
Brighton, north of Brisbane
Widespread flooding in Queensland has now claimed three lives. The body of a man, believed to be a motorcyclist who was swept off the road, has been has been found in floodwaters south of Brisbane.
He’s the third person killed in the floods. Police say the body was found in Oxley Creek about 7am (AEST).
Police say the two other people who have died in the floods are an 81-year-old man whose body was pulled from the water near Bundaberg and a 27-year-old man who was found near Gympie.
A tree has also fallen on a family in Brisbane’s north, trapping a mother and her little boy.
Emergency crews are working to free the woman while the child has been taken to hospital.
The cyclone has caused millions of dollars worth of damage and cut power to 225,000 properties. Energex latest report notes that 1200 powerlines are down across the state.
In Brisbane 68 roads are closed due to flooding, fallen powerlines or trees. Brisbane City Council has handed out over 18,000 sandbags since Friday morning
storm hits nsw
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In NSW about 2000 people have been cut off by floodwaters and emergency services have performed more than 10 rescues, as destructive winds and rain hit the northern part of the state and move slowly south.
Severe weather warnings have been issued for much of NSW as ex-tropical cyclone Oswald currently moves slowly across the Queensland border, ushering in winds of up to 140km/h.
People in Sydney, the Illawarra, the Northern Rivers, the mid-north coast, the Hunter and the northern and central tablelands are all being warned to prepare for heavy rain that may lead to flash flooding, with the Hopkins Creek weather station near Mullumbimby on the far north coast recording almost 540mm of rain in the last 24 hours to 9am(AEDT).
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Mohammed Nabi said the wild weather is expected to reach east of Moree this afternoon, and west of Armidale this evening.
He said the low-pressure system, which has lost its structure since being a Category 1 cyclone, was dumping a lot of moisture from the Tasman Sea on coastal areas.
As it moves south, he said Newcastle will probably start seeing the worst of it on late Monday evening with winds forecast to reach up to 100km/h and downpours of up to 200mm.
Damage bill
Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan confirmed that 35 local authorities had been declared eligible for disaster relief payments.
Mr Swan said it was too early to tell whether the damage bill would top the $6 billion mark from the devastating floods of 2011. A new Queensland Flood Appeal has been launched with the state government donating $1 million already.
The group declared large parts of Queensland to be ‘catastrophic’, with moderate to severe damage experienced from the NSW border to Cairns.
Telstra services are also down across much of central and northern Queensland causing havoc for emergency services, which have been called out for eight emergency rescues.
The collapse in telecommunications services came as authorities warned residents in low-lying areas in the Lockyer Valley in southeast Queensland to evacuate and seek higher ground before major flooding hits.
The peak level in the Brisbane River is set to reach 2.6 metres, well under the 4-metre level reached during the devastating 2011 floods.
Major flooding was expected overnight downstream of Laidley and Gatton in Lockyer Creek and Laidley Creek and anyone at risk of flooding should seek higher ground, the warning said.
Residents around the Mary River at Gympie were also warned of flooding, with those in low-lying areas urged to relocate to higher ground if necessary before an expected flood peak of 21 metres hits.
As dawn broke, rescuers in the flood-hit city of Bundaberg were battling to reach 30 people trapped on rooftops.
Premier Campbell Newman said it’s been too dangerous to save those people, but efforts were continuing.
Bundaberg flood crest 8.7m
He said the flood in Bundaberg was expected to break all records, with water levels reaching 8.7 metres at 5am on Monday.
Mr Newman said the city was expecting a flood “well and truly beyond the formal record flood of 1942” and possibly bigger than a flood that wasn’t properly recorded in the 1890s.
“There is quite a critical situation there at the moment with 30 people stranded on roofs,” he told ABC News 24.
Telstra said that most of the landline and broadband services were down in Mackay, Freshwater, Cairns, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mount Isa and Gladstone.
Many mobile services are out in central and northern parts of the state. The emergency triple zero service has also been impacted by the damage and new emergency numbers for key population cities were set up (see below).
Police say where possible, people impacted by the Telstra outage should use mobile phone coverage of an alternative carrier to call triple zero.
Telstra's coastal fibre-optic cable, which carries much of the state's communications needs, was damaged by severe flooding in the Colosseum area on Friday evening.
160,000 without power
This was followed by further damage to a back-up cable north of Harlin late Sunday as well as power outages.
Telstra said service restoration depended on the weather and was unlikely until at least Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Energex spokesman Nathan Hatch told the ABC that in the early hours on Monday 160,000 properties were still without power, down from 230,000 on Sunday night.
But he said it could take up to 48 hours before power was returned to some homes.
"As soon as it gets light our crews will really get out there and restore as much power as they possibly can, safely of course," he said.
"The weather has been so extreme. There's been flooded rivers, trees across roads, it could be quite a while ... We'll know a lot more once it's light."
Emergency numbers for northern and central Queensland:
Cairns 4030 7000
Mareeba 4030 3340
Townsville 4750 5581 or 4750 5583
Mt Isa 4744 1111 or 4744 1808
Mackay 4968 3530
Gladstone 4971 3222
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