Floods continue to batter Australia

The Guardian (UK) via Associated Press: Flash floods swept through a Queensland community today, killing one woman, trapping others in cars and leaving some clinging to trees in a region battling its worst flooding in decades. The torrent of muddy water swamped the city of Toowoomba, west of the state capital, Brisbane, killing one female pedestrian, a state police spokeswoman said.

Video footage of the scene shows a man clutching a tree as the water sweeps down a street, pushing vehicles off the road, into each other and flinging one van into trees. "We've had multiple calls requesting urgent assistance from people caught in vehicles, caught on the street, caught in flood ways," Queensland's deputy police commissioner, Ian Stewart, said. "This has just evolved. There has been no warning of this event."

The state has been devastated by weeks of heavy rain and overflowing rivers. Eleven people have died since late November and about 200,000 have been affected by the floods. Roads and rail lines have been cut off, the coal mine industry has virtually shut down, and cattle farming across a large part of the state is at a standstill….

Children playing in a flooded street at Breakfast Creek, Queensland, in 1938