Storms Lash Brisbane, Down Power Lines as Australian City Returns to Work
Storms Lash Brisbane, Down Power Lines
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Volunteers push mud into storm drains as they clean up flood debris from damaged houses in the Brisbane suburb of Fairfield.
Volunteers push mud into storm drains as they clean up flood debris from damaged houses in the Brisbane suburb of Fairfield. Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Thunderstorms lashed the southeast of Australia’s Queensland state and its capital Brisbane, knocking down power lines just as the city returned to work after its worst floods since 1974.
The rain and storms, which delivered hailstones as big as golf balls and packed 95 kilometer-per-hour (60 mph) winds, are moving north and may continue today and tomorrow, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on its website.
“Damaging winds, very heavy rainfall, flash flooding and large hailstones are likely,” the bureau said in a severe thunderstorm warning yesterday.
The fresh deluge, which downed electricity cables between Brisbane and Gold Coast resorts and blew trees onto homes, adds to the state’s difficulties as it recovers from almost seven weeks of floods. As the scale of the damage becomes clearer, estimates for the repair bill have swelled and businesses are shouldering a larger share of the cost.
Rebuilding after the floods may cost as much as A$20 billion ($20 billion), or about 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, economists from Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. wrote in a research report dated yesterday.
Australia’s government has paid more than A$136 million to flood victims, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said in a statement yesterday.
“While we do not know the full impact of the floods, it’s clear the full recovery will take years,” McClelland said. “This disaster has affected urban communities as well as primary producers and small business.”
Corporate Donations
A business task force, including Linfox Group founder Lindsay Fox, will leverage corporate donations to help rebuild Queensland after the inundations devastated homes, destroyed crops and closed mines.
Wesfarmers Ltd. yesterday contributed A$5 million to Premier Anna Bligh’s relief appeal, and Xstrata Plc doubled its donation to A$2 million. Flight Centre Ltd. pledged A$2 million, ConocoPhillips A$1 million, Vale SA A$500,000 and Pfizer Australia Pty Ltd. gave A$250,000. Total contributions now exceed more than A$100 million, Bligh said in a statement yesterday.
The scope of the rebuilding prompted calls from opposition leader Tony Abbott for the government to scrap projects such as the National Broadband Network. The government is spending A$35.7 billion to bring the fiber-optic network to 93 percent of Australian homes in the nation’s largest infrastructure project.
‘Unavoidable Projects’
“It’s time for the government to stop spending on unnecessary projects so that it can start spending on unavoidable projects,” Abbott told reporters yesterday.
U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague, who yesterday held talks with his counterpart Kevin Rudd, plans to tour flood-hit parts of Brisbane this week, Sky News reported.
Brisbane City Council urged businesses and residents to form groups of as many as 20 people to register to clean up the city. Volunteers should bring their own equipment and transport, the council said in a statement.
The death toll from the deluges may be as high as 32, Bligh has said. Flooding in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales represents Australia’s biggest natural disaster in economic terms, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said.
In northwest Victoria, where at least 11 towns have been evacuated in the past three days in the face of record floods, police yesterday found the body of an eight-year-old boy who had fallen into a stream.
Flood warnings were in place yesterday for 13 Victoria state rivers, the Bureau of Meteorology said on its website.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angus Whitley in Sydney at awhitley1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Lagerkranser at lagerkranser@bloomberg.net
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