Victoria Prepares for Flooding as Brisbane Starts Cleans Up

ROLLING DISASTER: Piles of household goods damaged in the recent flood in Brisbane on Sunday

Towns in Victoria prepared for record floods as rivers swelled while Brisbane in the northeastern state of Queensland returned to work with power restored to the business district and thousands of volunteers joining troops to clean mud-caked homes and suburban streets.

In the southeastern state of Victoria, flooding is affecting 43 towns and 1,400 properties, according to emergency services. Horsham, a town 300 kilometers (186 miles) northwest of Melbourne, is expected to experience the worst flooding on record in Victoria when the Wimmera river reaches its peak tomorrow, according to emergency services authorities.

The flooding in Victoria, Queensland and elsewhere represents the biggest natural disaster in economic terms to hit Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said today. The floods have devastated homes, destroyed crops, closed mines and killed at least 28 people in the past six weeks.

"We're going to have to work through those economic effects as we move through the clean up and recovery phase into rebuilding the infrastructure and getting communities back on their feet," Gillard said as she toured Echuca, north of Melbourne. "We're going to have to take it a step at a time."

In Echuca, the Campaspe river peaked last night, the Bureau of Meteorology said. Several hundred people from Echuca and Rochester are in evacuation centers, Sky News reported. Towns on the Loddon and Hopkins rivers are also bracing, with about a quarter of Victoria so far affected.

Some 5,000 emergency services volunteers are helping in Victoria, Lachlan Quick, an emergency services spokesman, said.


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