The flood water settled into Granville Street with little warning on Saturday evening. By the next morning, John Huth was soaked up to his waist as he retrieved storage boxes from under his Wilston house in Brisbane’s inner north, the water still creeping up towards the floorboards.
“This place didn’t flood in 2011,” says John’s wife, Gwen. “When we moved here we looked and we knew this house wasn’t affected. The backyard is now completely underwater.”
In the street behind John and Gwen, the State Emergency Service had a rescue boat driving along what used to be Noble Street, going house to house to check that residents had been able to evacuate.
Long-term locals in surrounding streets remember historic floods going back to the 1950s. Everywhere in Brisbane, each flood event is talked about relative to the last. Newmarket and Wilston residents point out where the water came during the short but intense storm brought by ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie in 2017; during the 2011 Brisbane floods; during 1974 after three weeks of steady rain.
The biggest problem in 2022 is the relentless rain that has impacted local waterways and caused frequent flash flooding. On Sunday it continued to sheet down, as it has for several days, with more than 1,400 homes estimated to be impacted “above the floorboards” so far.
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned the rain is not likely to subside until Monday morning.
Many of the areas experiencing worse localised flooding than previous years are along Breakfast Creek, which becomes Enoggera Creek and runs from the Enoggera Reservoir to the Brisbane River.
The reservoir, about 10km from Brisbane’s central business district, is not gated and spills when it exceeds capacity. On Sunday it was 230% full, or about 5.5m litres more than what the spillway can otherwise hold.
Low-lying suburbs south of the Brisbane River, including Graceville and Yeronga, are also losing homes to the rising water.
Here is Hyde Road at Eversely Terrace in Yeronga just now. Impassible, flooded several low-lying houses already, and the level is still rising. #BrisbaneFloods pic.twitter.com/z4WQV5mVoO
— David Jobling 💉💉💉 (@DJobling) February 27, 2022
The main street of Rosalie, in Brisbane’s inner north, was flooded on Sunday. Locals in New Farm reported seeing people paddling kayaks past shops in the heart of the suburb.
Photos showed severe damage to several boats and the ferry terminal at Hawthorn on the south side of the Brisbane River.
More photos just in at Hawthorne Ferry Terminal.#bneweather #bnefloods #bneflooding pic.twitter.com/N3LLU6Hu5t
— Councillor Kara Cook (@CrKaraCook) February 27, 2022
In some places, the water has built steadily over days; in others, the inundation occurred too quickly for people to evacuate or move cars. Dozens of vehicles have been swallowed by the tide.
Sarah, a renter in Cramond Street at Wilston, lives in a traditional Queensland workers’ cottage that has been raised and built-in underneath. The two lower bedrooms are now under about half a metre of water.
“We’ve been here for two years,” she said. “We didn’t really expect it. We’ve managed to move most of the valuable stuff upstairs, and we’re OK up here.”
Andrew, a Wilston resident, says he sandbagged his home on Saturday night but was considering adding a second row of bags after the flood water surged to the verge of his neighbour’s front yard.
“We’ve been here since the start of Covid,” he said. “The lady who lives two doors up was talking to us about the 2011 flood and even the floods back in the 1950s and said it didn’t come up to here. We’re hopeful we stay dry, but we’ll wait and see.”
The Brisbane lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, told reporters on Sunday the flood was a “unique event”.
“This is different [to previous floods],” he said. “[In 2011] the rain stopped while the river continued to rise. We have a rain bomb over south-east Queensland at the moment.
“We have creek flooding, river flooding and overland flow happening all at once. As the rain continues, we have at least 24 hours of danger.”
Six people have died since the rain began; the latest was a man who became stuck while attempting to drive through flood water at Indooroopilly. Witnesses told police the man had freed himself from his vehicle and attempted to swim to safety, before encountering trouble.
Police are still searching for a man in his 70s who fell overboard from his vessel near the mouth of Breakfast Creek on Saturday afternoon.
