A year's worth of rain was dumped on north Queensland in a week and Sunday night was described by authorities as the worst so far as locals prepare for a "long, hard week" ahead.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
A total of 1100 residents were evacuated overnight, the SES received 850 calls for help in the 24 hours to Monday morning, rescue crews saved 18 people and one looter was arrested by police.
Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill vented her frustration after some residents in areas predicted to be inundated, had to be doorknocked and asked to leave twice.
"You can’t say you weren’t warned something might happen," she said.
"What do we have to do to make people move?"
The fire service, police officers, SES volunteers and army vehicles worked together to carry out the mass evacuations and council rubbish trucks have been transformed into "people-movers".
Queensland Police Service Superintendent Steve Munro said on Sunday night, officers went out to the highest number of calls during the flood.
Police received 150 calls to "high-risk" incidents and while responding to one, a police car was swept away and the officers had to be rescued.
"If people had left their homes as we had asked over the past few days, we wouldn’t have had so many calls for assistance," he said.
Townsville resident Erin Hahn posted a photograph of a crocodile outside her father's house in Mundingburra, and urged people to "stay out of the water".
The Ross River Dam floodgates were fully opened about 9pm on Sunday after the dam neared 250 per cent capacity.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said schools, the airport and courts in Townsville would remain closed on Monday and there were more tough times ahead.
"We’re not out of this yet, the monsoonal trough is still settling in over Townsville," she said.
"During the next couple of days, there will be more heavy rain and damaging wind gusts."
Ms Palaszczuk said about 1000 displaced people were sheltering in six evacuation centres.
The Ross River at Aplin Weir peaked at 3.4m on Sunday night, below the expected four-metre mark, and was holding steady at 3m on Monday morning.
Cr Hill said an estimated 400 millimetres fell on the dam catchment area in 24 hours on Sunday, more than double the amount predicted, which led to the water release.
"We've had a year’s worth of rain in seven days," she said.
"We continue to break records we don’t really want to break."
Bureau of Meteorology state manager Bruce Gunn said the monsoonal low-pressure system was expected to move south towards the central Queensland coast before moving back north.
"Current rainfall totals in Townsville now put this event well beyond the 1998 Night of Noah and we still have more days to come," he said.
The Townsville suburb of Bluewater and the city's airport have received record rainfall during the past seven days - 1626 and 1158 millimetres respectively.
Mr Gunn said a severe weather warning remained in place from Cardwell in the north, to Mackay on the central coast and inland to Cloncurry.
"Similar conditions seen in Townsville are now moving south towards Mackay," he said.
"We could see rainfall between 150 and 200 millimetres in six hours with isolated falls of up to 300 millimetres.
"There could also be 120km/h wind gusts with thunderstorms."
Flood warnings remained in place for the Flinders, Cloncurry, Leichhardt, Norman, Nicholson, Gregory and Gilbert rivers.
In a piece of good news, drought-stricken western Queensland was welcoming the rain, including Cloncurry which received almost 60 millimetres on Sunday.
Up to 500 homes were underwater in Townsville on Monday.
Ms Palaszczuk said the cost of the clean-up could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
