Brisbane families returning to their flood-affected homes say the water levels rose hard and fast, and caught many by surprise.
The Proctor family evacuated their Red Hill home on Friday, returning today to see what is left.
"Thankfully our children aren't here, they're all with their best friends at the moment," Karen Proctor said.
"We don't want them to see this, it's hard."
The family moved in almost two years ago and knew the home had flooded before, but Ms Proctor said she did not expect the water to rise so quickly.
"We knew it was a flood zone and it's flooded before, but we never expected this," she said.
"It was only one o'clock yesterday, that it was reaching the floorboards and it came up within an hour."
Mrs Proctor said the family would have done more to prepare for the deluge if the warnings had come.
"We would've definitely got a truck in if we were warned, we should've done that," she said.
Lewis Priddin and his partner Charlie also did not expect the water to rise so quickly at their Red Hill home.
"It was from zero to 100 in about 10 seconds," he said.
"From 12 o'clock to three o'clock, it went from lapping to our heels ... to about chest height."
The couple left the house at 3:00pm on Sunday but said many of their neighbours had to be rescued.
"There was a guy who was stuck in a tree, there was a family of three stuck up the back there with a baby," he said.
'We didn't even have a chance to sandbag'
Bulimba man Stephen Young said his home has flooded several times since 2011 and said he believed authorities failed residents.
"They knew this year was going to be a wet summer, the same as 2011, and it just feels like they were caught napping," he said.
"I appreciate it was a big rain event and whatever else, but it's Queensland.
He said the back flow valves installed in the area after the 2011 flood catastrophe "seem to work" but the water could not escape because the river level was too high.
"And the reason the river level was too high was because they were releasing water from Wivenhoe," he said.
"I understand the dynamics around not wanting to lower the water just in case we don't get rain and then we face drought, I understand all of those complexities.
"But you just can't keep flooding the city right … you can't keep wrecking people's lives."
Seqwater has explained the peak flood levels would have happened naturally without Wivenhoe Dam releases, which occurred "in a slow and controlled way to protect Brisbane".
In a string of tweets, it explained, the water authority was "able to operate under the flood manuals to strike the balance between maintaining emergency response capacity in the dam and preventing worse flooding in Brisbane".
"Flood engineers have been able to do this through slow controlled releases which has not exacerbated the natural peak of the river."
The Young family had water rush into the lower level of their home, ruining carpet and damaging the floor.
He said they did not have flood insurance because the cost of it jumped 700 per cent in the wake of 2011 to about $7,000 a year.
"It's just heartbreaking to be honest ... to see water coming up and you can't do anything about it," he said.
"We didn't even have a chance to sandbag."
Karen Young said the only silver lining is that their home was inundated by fresh water this time.
"Compared to 2011 it was muddy river water … not quite as disgusting to clean up," she said.
A stressful welcome to Queensland for Melbourne family
Over the road on Smallman Street, Jonathan Dexter and his family had 10 centimetres of water through their living area, destroying couches, beds and whitegoods.
Power has been out for 36 hours.
Mr Dexter said they moved to Brisbane from Melbourne two months ago and their real estate agent took them in overnight after they were forced to evacuate.
He said the local community has pulled together.
"The help I've got from neighbours and everyone pitching in, that's been lovely ... a nice way to meet people really quickly," he said.
