Floods threaten Queensland town's levees

Alison Rourke in the Guardian (UK): Thousands of residents of the rural Queensland town of St George are waiting anxiously to see if the town's levees will hold up to a record flood. About 3,000 of the town's residents left on Sunday after a mandatory evacuation order was issued in the biggest operation of its kind in Queensland's history.

On Monday, emergency crews scrambled to complete a 2.5-mile (4km) dirt levee around the town, 300 miles west of Brisbane. It is thought the levee will hold water from the rising Balonne river up to 14.7 metres. The river is predicted to peak at around 14.5 metres on Tuesday, down from original forecasts of 15 metres.

The district's mayor, Donna Stewart, said she was confident the levee would hold. "The picture is not as grim as what it was looking this time yesterday," she told the ABC. "I'm very confident that the levee bank that we've constructed at 14.7 metres will keep the water out of the major part of the town."

Residents stranded on remote properties outside the town centre were assured by Queensland premier, Anna Bligh, they would be looked after. "Can I say to everybody who is out there, many of whom I know are isolated, that we know where you are, we haven't forgotten you, and while you may not have seen anybody yet there is air support and there are food supplies and you haven't been forgotten," she said.

A prominent member of the opposition coalition party, National's senator Barnaby Joyce, lives in St George. "It is so quiet that it's a little disturbing," he told ABC radio. "There is something that sounds a little bit like the sea but it is not actually the sea, it's a river and it is just outside the back door." Extra police have been brought in to patrol the town....

Balonne River floods over a bridge in the St. George district, ca. 1941. When it comes to flooding, the past is the template