Brisbane River Breaks Its Banks

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Brisbane's inner-city workers are emptying the capital as floodwaters begin to break the banks of the Brisbane River.

The CBD has not been officially evacuated but workers are heading home as the city faces its worst flooding since 1974, when 6700 homes were flooded.

This follows flash flooding in Toowoomba and surrounding areas yesterday which has left at least eight people dead.

A number of other areas around Brisbane and Toowoomba are facing floods as storms continue across south-east Queensland.

Brisbane's public buses and trains will continue where possible, officials say, but CityCat and CityFerry services on the Brisbane River have already stopped.

Office towers on Eagle Street are emptying out, along with businesses in Fortitude Valley, and car parks in Brisbane's CBD have opened their boom gates, telling people to get their cars out.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said urgent modelling was being carried out to determine how the floodwaters would affect the situation in the capital, and west at Ipswich where evacuation alerts are also in place.

She said that floodwaters were moving into the catchment of the Wivenhoe dam, and from there it must be released at a controlled rate into the Brisbane River.

Earlier Ms Bligh reported eight deaths but warned of a potentially dramatic rise in the death toll from flash flooding across the region's southeast.

She said 72 people remained unaccounted for — and that figure was also likely to rise — after an 8m wall of water swept through Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley.

"We're hoping and praying that many of those 72 people have gone to safety overnight and will be found safe and well," she said.

"But given the circumstances, we hold very grave concerns for many of those people who are unaccounted for in this region.

"Many of the people who are stranded or unaccounted for are families and young children and some of those who have lost their lives overnight are young children, including a mother and two children in a vehicle."

Ms Bligh said bad weather was hampering search efforts where people were still stranded in "dire and critical circumstances".

She said there were "whole families unaccounted for".

She said half of the eight deaths confirmed so far were children.

"It might be breaking our hearts at the moment, but it will not break our will," she said.

An air evacuation is underway for 300 people at Forest Hill, west of Brisbane.

At Laidley and Oakey, emergency services urged residents to climb onto their roofs or find other higher ground and wait for air rescue after as many as 60 homes were hit by flash flooding.

Residents of Caboolture, Strathpine and Dayboro have also been advised they should evacuate to higher ground immediately.

Caboolture is now completely isolated and evacuation out of town by car is impossible.

Those in low lying areas who can do so should move to higher ground or prepare for rising water.

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