Australia put an army general in charge of flood recovery efforts yesterday after weeks of heavy rains deluged its north east, crippling the area’s economy, including the coal mining industry.
Floodwaters have forced most of Queensland sttate’s coal mines to shut and some may not restart production for months, ministers said at an emergency Cabinet meeting in Brisbane.
After the meeting, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced that Major General Mick Slater would lead the recovery effort of floods that have affected 200,000 people and are estimated to cost billions of pounds.
“This is a disaster of an unprecedented scale and it will require an unparalleled rebuilding effort,” Ms Bligh told reporters.
But until the waters dry up, it won’t be clear what the cost of the flooding will be, he warned.
“If you count everything from the cost to homes, the home rebuilding effort, public infrastructure rebuilding effort and economic loss, I think we’re well above five billion dollars territory,” she said.
Queensland is a centre of Australia’s coal mining industry and 40 mines have been shut because of the flooding.
“It’s going to take some months for some mines to be back to full operation,” Resources Minister Stephen Robertson said.
“We earn round about $100 million a day exporting coal to the rest of the world and exports have been significantly restricted by the impact on infrastructure.”
The deluge has also ruined crops and caused “catastrophic” damage to Queensland’s transport systems, Ms Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
More than a week of pounding rains that started just before Christmas left much of north-eastern Australia under a sea of water that is making its way through river systems toward the ocean.
Around 1,200 homes in Queensland have been inundated, with another 10,700 suffering some damage. Four thousand residents evacuated from their homes in the flood zone, which spans an area greater than France and Germany combined.
The coastal city of Rockhampton has been particularly hit and exhausted residents were warned today they would face a long wait before the churning, muddy mess dries up.
But there was hope the waters had swelled to their highest level. Water from the overflowing Fitzroy River has already swamped 200 homes and 100 businesses, while flooding elsewhere in northeastern Australia has forced thousands to evacuate.
“It looks like it may have stabilised,” Mayor Brad Carter said.
In other parts of the state, some flooded communities were beginning to dry out.
In the town of Theodore, which evacuated all 300 residents last week, specialists arrived in helicopters today to check the safety of power, water and sewage plants, county Mayor John Hooper said. Officials were still trying to determine when it would be safe to allow residents to return. One problem: An influx of venomous snakes, flushed from their habitats and searching for dry ground amid the waters.
Rockhampton residents have also reported seeing higher than usual numbers of snakes, Mr Carter said.
Saltwater crocodiles were another worry for people entering floodwaters, as the predators have been spotted from time to time in the Fitzroy, he said.
In the southern Queensland town of St George, nursing home residents evacuated and residents toiled in the rain to build levee banks ahead of floodwaters expected to peak next week.
The town was devastated in March by another flood, and residents were worried the latest onslaught of water would cause even more damage.
Meanwhile, Australia has blamed the disruptive La Nina weather pattern for the epic flooding that has inundated thousands of northeastern homes and swamped an area the size of Texas.
The meteorology bureau said La Nina, which forms in the Pacific and is associated with extreme weather, had brought the wettest year on record in Queensland state, where 40 towns have been deluged or isolated by flooding.
“By July, La Nina conditions were well established and most areas of Australia experienced very much above average rainfall,” the bureau said in an annual climate report on Wednesday. “The second half of the year (July to December) was the wettest on record for Australia.”
La Nina is the opposition condition of El Nino, which subsided in June after being blamed for an exceptionally snowbound winter in North America and Europe. La Nina is characterised by unusually cool ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, and is associated with strong rainfall in Asia and Australia, bitter cold snaps in North America, and drought in South America.