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.