Australia floods claim first life as thousands evacuate

Thousands of Australians were forced to abandon their homes yesterday as a record deluge swept through areas still reeling from last year’s devastating floods, claiming its first life.

Police ordered the 3,800 residents of the town of St George, in northern Queensland, to evacuate as rising floodwaters raced towards record heights, threatening to cut the one remaining exit road.

In the town of Roma, further north, a woman whose car was swept from a flooded roadway became the disaster’s first official victim yesterday, with searchers finding her body two days after she first went missing.

In a mandatory evacuation order to St George residents, police said: “Air evacuation to Brisbane is being organised to ensure evacuations can proceed after the Moonie Highway closes.”

The swollen Balonne River, flooding for the third time in less than two years, was expected to peak at 15 metres on Tuesday night, far exceeding the previous record of 13.4 metres, which was set in March 2010.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard dispatched a military transport plane to airlift patients from the town’s hospital to the coast.

The local nursing home was also being emptied.

Eight defence helicopters are already helping search and rescue efforts in the flood zone, winching people to safety and dropping food, bedding, medical supplies and other essentials such as generators.

St George has seen major flooding twice in the past two years, once in March 2010 and again during last year’s Queensland flooding disaster, which claimed 35 lives and swamped vast tracts of farmland and tens of thousands of homes.

Deputy Queensland police commissioner Ian Stewart said the situation in the region had “deteriorated” overnight with “very large spikes” in water levels south of Roma, where 200 homes flooded earlier this week.

The woman who died in Roma managed to save her seven-year-old son from the floodwaters but was swept away before she could be rescued, according to the Courier Mail newspaper.