The details coming out of Queensland have been terrible and the situation is likely to get worse. Flooding from La Niña is blamed for the current problems. The Guardian:
Thousands of Brisbane residents were stockpiling food and stacking sandbags or fleeing their homes yesterday as the worst floodwaters to hit Queensland for 50 years surged towards Australia's third-largest city.
Many people in the state capital, fearful of the damage already done, appeared to have heeded the authorities' evacuation warnings. By last night, Brisbane's city centre was a ghost town populated only by a few shop owners hoping to save their businesses with last-minute barricades of sandbags and plastic sheeting.
Ten people died on Monday as cars and pedestrians were swept away in an "inland instant tsunami" that sent a wall of water coursing through the city of Toowoomba, west of Brisbane. More than 40 people were pulled from rooftops by military helicopters that were still searching for 90 missing people yesterday. Another 200 Australian Defence Force personnel are being dispatched to southern Queensland, which has been declared a disaster area. The flooding has claimed 14 lives in the last two weeks, but police fear the death toll could rise significantly as the bodies of people who may have drowned in their cars and homes are found.
