Worst over for Brisbane as deadly flood runs out of puff
By DPA, IANSThursday, January 13, 2011
SYDNEY - Australia’s third-biggest city woke up Thursday to the good news that the Brisbane River had peaked below the forecast and flood damage had come in below expectations.
The river reached 4.46 metres in Brisbane, well short of the 5.2 that hydrologists had predicted and nearly 1 metre below the 5.45 metres that touched off the catastrophic flooding of 1974.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said he now expected around 12,000 houses and 2,500 businesses to be completely flooded and 14,700 houses and 2,500 businesses with partial flood damage.
“We all now have to rally together to help these people clean up, the ones that have suffered impacts,” Newman said.
Bureau of Meteorology hydrologist Peter Baddiley said he expected the river running through the state capital of the northeastern state of Queensland to fall to 3.2 metres Friday.
More than 115,000 houses were without power, commercial life was at a standstill and it might be days before the thousands in evacuation centres would be allowed to return home.
“There will be some people that will go into their homes that will find them to be never habitable again,” Queensland Premier Anna Bligh warned.
The monthlong flooding disaster has seen successive towns hit by engorged rivers racing through Queensland on their way to emptying in the Pacific Ocean.
Fourteen people were confirmed dead, and more than 50 were unaccounted for.
Two-thirds of Queensland - an area bigger than France and Germany combined - is flooded, industry is idle and agriculture beset by lost harvests.
The repair bill has been put at 5 billion Australian dollars ($4.9 billion) and lost production at 9 billion Australian dollars.
“We are facing a reconstruction task of postwar proportions,” Bligh said. “Major roads and arterials have been cut. Railway lines are out.”
Matthew Johnson, an economist at the investment bank UBS, said the disaster would have a bigger impact on the Australian economy than Hurricane Katrina did on the US economy in 2005 with output shaved by 1 full percentage point in the first quarter of the year.
“This is a very grim situation, and Queensland is going to need us to stand shoulder to shoulder with Queenslanders over months and months and months of recovery,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.
