Brisbane is threatened by water spilling from Wivenhoe dam as floods engulf SE Queensland following a week of extreme weather.
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A dam and a prayer January 12, 2011 Floods headed for Brisbane Brisbane City Council has released a list of suburbs in the state capital where properties are likely to be inundated by water on Wednesday.
Video feedbackVideo settings The devastating flood has left whole families missing, now a mighty dam built to protect Brisbane after its last major flood disaster is at bursting point, reports David Humphries.
The Wivenhoe Dam - built to spare the Queensland capital a repeat of devastating floods in 1974 - is at its limit.
His remarks revealed the tension of the waiting game before the expected flooding tomorrow of more than 6000 Brisbane homes - the expectation at the start of the week was 200 - and the evacuation of the homes of 3500 residents.
''Wivenhoe has protected Brisbane over the last few weeks from flooding,'' Mr Newman said.
''Unfortunately, the big shock absorber that is that dam is now full.
Just when it seemed the worst might be over - after more than 40 days and nights of drowning rains across a vast Queensland - nature raised the ante.
On Monday Toowoomba was battered by a torrent 10 times the concentration of rainfall that Sydneysiders consider a serious downpour.
Unlike the creeping floods that infiltrated other provincial cities since the rains started in November, it hit without notice and spilt over the Great Dividing Range to the Lockyer Valley below.
Grantham, a town of a few hundred, was washed away, taking the lives of a woman and two children trying to escape in a car.
Ms Bligh said yesterday that she had been advised flood levels in the Brisbane River, which snakes through the capital's heart, would continue to rise until tomorrow and would exceed the level of 1974, when 14 people died, 300 were injured, at least 6700 homes were flooded and $2 billion (in today's terms) was paid out in insurance claims.
Maria Tomasic, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said people's distress would outlive the floodwaters.
Two years ago, its dam level fell below 8 per cent and water was pumped from the Great Artesian Basin.
But the downpour of the past few days does not rival the Brisbane drenching of 1974, when more than 900 millimetres fell in only five days.
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