Seeking safety In this photo provided by the Queensland Police, two police officers walk along a flooded creek at Innisfail, Australia, Monday. Floodwaters that cover an area the size of France and Germany combined are draining slowly toward Australia's northeast coast, filling bulging rivers to overflowing and inundating at least 22 towns and cities in the cattle and fruit and vegetable farming region. (AP) n Military joins flood fight, evacuations ordered GRACEMERE, Australia: Military aircraft ferried supplies to an Australian town slowly sinking beneath swollen rivers Monday, as record flooding in the country's northeast severed roads and ports, curtailing coal exports and devastating farmland. Floods covering an area the size of France and Germany combined submerged the Capricorn Highway, the major traffic artery through Queensland state. High waters surged into homes in the sinking town of Rockhampton, sending furniture and refrigerators cascading down torrents of floodwater. Storm warnings were issued in southern Queensland late Monday, with heavy rain and new flash floods forecast. Motorists were told to avoid flooded roads after a man drowned in central Queensland - bringing to two the official death toll in what state Treasurer Andrew Fraser called a “disaster of biblical proportions”. Floodwaters have brought most coal mining operations to a halt in Queensland – the state exporting the majority of the coking coal produced in Australia. Sugar cane production was also hit as was - to a lesser extent - the grain harvest. The state's premier said recovery would take weeks. Rockhampton, a community of 77,000 just off the Pacific coast and 600 km north of the state capital Brisbane, was accessible mainly by emergency services boats. Rescue workers escorted stranded patients out of hospitals, police ordered reluctant residents to leave their homes, and electricty company teams made their way up to abandoned homes to ensure power was switched off. Snakes slithered their way across the waterlogged highway a few km outside the devastated town. Police cordoned off vast swathes of territory to keep people out of flooded areas. Emergency officials erected dozens of tents for a “tactical medical centre” at the small airport in the coal port of Gladstone – about 100 km south of Rockhampton. Rockhampton resident Reg Wilson said police gave him little choice but to leave his home. “A policeman came along in a car with a gun on his hip who said ‘You be out of here by five o'clock or else',” he said. “When a man with a gun talks to you like that, you get out.” Flooding has caused more than A$1 billion ($980 million) in damage, forced some 200,000 residents from their homes and hit commodity exports that are a mainstay of the Australian economy. Mining operations were all but at a standstill in Gladstone's port, normally piled high with coal for shipment, and coal trains were idle - their route to the port cut off by washed-out rail lines. Global miners, including Anglo American and Rio Tinto , have cancelled shipments and declared force majeure. Coal is Australia's number one export earner, accounting for $55 billion dollars of export revenue each year. “This is a major natural disaster and recovery will take a significant amount of time,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said while announcing financial aid for flood victims. “The extent of flooding being experienced by Queensland is unprecedented and requires a national and united response.” The floods were triggered by cooling “La Nina” ocean currents that produced monsoon rains over the western Pacific and southeast Asia on the heels of months of downpours. Queensland's interior, normally a vast outback of cattle properties, farms and mines, is now an inland sea, dotted with the roofs of flooded homes and islands with stranded livestock. The state's emergency coordinator, Police Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart, told reporters flood waters in Rockhampton stood 9 metres (30 ft) above normal early Monday.
