Police have urged people not to enter flood waters in south-east Queensland, where one man and five dogs died, and another person was swept away.
During a day of heavy rain, a man and five dogs died before 5am on Monday after a vehicle and trailer belonging to a pet-moving business was caught in flood waters near Kingsthorpe, north-west of Toowoomba.
A woman, who was the driver, was rescued from the vehicle, but a male passenger died.
Police on Monday said an “extensive search and rescue” was also under way for a man swept away near North Branch in the Southern Downs.
Emergency services were called before 7am when two vehicles became stuck in flood waters at a crossing with Spring Creek.
Members of the public helped rescue one of the drivers, but a man in his 40s tried to get out of his vehicle and was swept away. Both the rescued woman and missing man were the sole occupants of their vehicles.
Acting inspector Kim Hill said in the period since 6pm Sunday night, police had received eight calls for assistance in the Darling Downs area for people who had “found themselves in danger after entering flood waters”.
“This morning police and swift water rescue have undertaken three rescues of people from vehicles stuck in flood waters,” Hill told reporters on Monday.
The man killed near Kingsthorpe was the 14th to die in flood waters in Queensland over the last six weeks.
Disaster Management Coordination superintendent, John Bosnjak, said “some people just don’t seem to listen” to the warnings of emergency services.
“Some people have been very unlucky, driving at night into flooded water, being washed away into rapid waters,” he said.
“Other people have just made very poor choices and end up losing their life.”
Their pleas for people to avoid flood waters came as much of south-east Queensland braced for flash flooding.
David Grant, a Bureau of Meteorology emergency management meteorologist said on Monday that a severe weather warning stretched from Noosa south to the border and inland towards Warwick, including the Scenic Rim and the Lockyer Valley.
He said the rain event could bring short bursts of rainfall in the order of 100mm to 150mm over a three to six-hour period, with localised thunderstorms bringing dumps of more than 200mm in that time frame.
He said this event was “very different” to the deadly event which triggered Queensland’s wettest February in 130 years.
“Although our rainfall totals won’t reach the magnitudes of what we did see in the last event, we have to be mindful that our catchments are very wet from that last event and therefor won’t take as much rainfall to see very rapid responses in a lot of our creeks and streams,” Grant said.
Residents in the Darling Downs town of Dalby were on high alert, with flood waters expected to threaten low lying parts of the town overnight on Tuesday.
On Monday morning, the town’s caravan park was evacuated for the second time this year.
