As the waters drained from the country's third largest city, revealing the full horror of the devastation wrought when the Brisbane River burst its banks, search teams recovered the body of a woman in the nearby Lockyer Valley.

Brisbane residents nervously returned to see what remained of their homes and businesses, as the muddy brown soup that had covered buildings up to their roofs dropped to reveal its aftermath.

"There is a lot of heartache and grief as people start to see for the first time what has happened to their homes and their streets," Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said a day after the river peaked.

"In some cases we have street after street after street where every home has been inundated to the roof level, affecting thousands of people."

She urged locals to help each other as the city of two million people began its daunting "post-war" rebuilding effort.

"I encourage people please to make an effort to help your friends, help your families," she said, as locals slopped out thick layers of stinking mud from their homes and businesses and tried to salvage any possessions that survived.

The river had dropped two metres from its peak of 4.46 metres (14 feet, eight inches), reached on Thursday, exposing damage that will add dramatically to Queensland's estimated flood reconstruction bill of Aus$5 billion ($5 billion).

More than 26,000 homes were flooded in Brisbane, 11,900 of them completely, leaving their owners set to be homeless for weeks or even months. Electricity remained cut to thousands of homes, and many key roads were still blocked.

An unbearable stench filled the air while the twisted remains of boats, parts of buildings, a large chunk of a concrete walkway and other debris lay on mud banks throughout the city.

At least 16 people have been confirmed killed in the floods in the last four days, most of them when flash floods hit the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, and the town of Toowoomba on Monday. Dozens of others are missing.

Officials said the body of one of those who died was recovered 80 kilometres (50 miles) from where that person went missing, indicating the possibility that the bodies of some of the flood's victims might never be found.

Bligh said that the valley town of Grantham -- the "epicentre" of the destruction that saw entire houses washed away and cars tossed around in the water like paper cups -- could "only compare to a war zone".

"The way that the town has been literally picked up and turned around and deposited in fields and roads... it's going to be very difficult for people to come home from the evaucation centres and see some of their precious possessions, and the things that matter to them, strewn across highways and fields," she told reporters.

As troops and emergency personnel combed areas of the valley for the missing, Prime Minister Julia Gillard doubled the number of soldiers tackling the floods to 1,200, the nation's biggest deployment for a natural disaster since 1974.

But there was good news for communities further south, with officials revising down concerns for the 6,000-strong town of Goondiwindi and some residents allowed to return to their homes.

Back in Brisbane, police arrested three people for looting in what they branded a "disturbing" development. So far 10 people have been arrested on such charges but police said they were carefully patrolling all flood-hit areas.

Meanwhile, as Queensland launched into recovery, parts of the southeast states of Victoria and Tasmania were evacuated as torrential rain -- thought to be connected to the northern rains -- caused flooding as rivers and dams burst.

earlier related report
Mud, stench as Australian flood clean-up begins
Brisbane, Australia (AFP) Jan 14, 2011 - Grandmother Irene Comstive shakes with sorrow as she surveys the damage to her Brisbane home following the city's worst flooding in almost four decades.

"Oh no, it's worse than I thought," the 83-year-old says as she looks at a sitting-room carpet turned from white to black by the surging waters which left the antique sofas, tables and chairs of her Rosalie home strewn about.

"I thought it would be how I left it. It's not insured."

Amid an almost unbearable stench, Craig Yeoman was washing away the thick mud caking his home.

"We want to get the mud out before it dries," he explained from his home in Paddington, a suburb badly affected when the Brisbane River broke its banks and seeped into some 26,000 homes on Wednesday and Thursday.

Despite the disaster, Yeoman said he was relieved he still had a house after the deluge. "Plenty of people haven't," he said.

Nearby in badly-hit Goodna, a suburb of Ipswich about 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) from Brisbane, many houses have been totally destroyed by the floods.

Residents loaded trucks with ruined furniture, clothes and white goods to be sent to the tip, with some, like mother of two Julie McCoy, forced to toss out virtually every possession after flood waters reached as high as the ceiling.

"There's really not a lot we can save," she told AFP, before breaking into tears as a friend arrived to console her.

After a few minutes she added: "Ironically, yesterday I received a text message from my insurance company saying, 'Make sure you pay your home insurance due tomorrow'.

"It was probably a computer-generated message, but still, it hurts."

As the waters receded Friday, residents of Ipswich and Brisbane -- Australia's third largest city -- shovelled mud from homes, footpaths and roads as their communities struggled to come back to life.

Homeowners rushed to remove stinking carpet and toss out furniture ruined by the toxic, brown water which left behind coatings of mud inches thick.

Business operators dumped ruined stock and garbage on footpaths as they attempted to clean up while they waited for power to be restored, after it was cut during the disaster that left Brisbane looking like a "war zone".

"It's not pretty in there," one cafe owner told Sky News, saying that the water level inside her premises had been the same inside and out at the height of the floods, despite sandbagging, as water came in through doors and up through drains. "It's just -- you begin again."

But she added: "We're lucky. We haven't lost our homes, we haven't lost loved ones."

Parts of Brisbane remain isolated by the floodwaters, forcing the military to bring in food and supplies overnight, while many traffic lights were still out.

As defence and emergency personnel combed small settlements west of Brisbane worst hit by the flash floods for more bodies, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the capital was slowing reviving.

"The (Brisbane) CBD (central business district) is largely operational but there are still 10 buildings without power and they will be one of the priorities today," she told reporters Friday.

Bligh said a minesweeper had been requested from the military to search Moreton Bay, which the Brisbane River feeds into, for debris including boats and large parts of buildings, which were washed down the river.

The flash floods swept more than a dozen people to their deaths.

But the emphasis Friday was on homeowners returning to survey the heart-breaking damage to those houses inundated to their rooftops by the water.

"Some of these houses will have to be demolished," Bligh said.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News