ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NPR's Anthony Kuhn is in Brisbane, and has this report.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSHING WATER)
ANTHONY KUHN: Earlier today, police urged Brisbane residents in low-lying areas to evacuate. Some 4,000 of them made their way to evacuation centers, including resident Brian Knapp. He says he had already moved his furniture out and today he had just enough time to drive through the water-covered streets to safety.
NORRIS: Round about midday, I heard on loudspeakers, the police must have been going around saying: You have to get out now. So I got in the car and just when down locally, just to see where the water was, and it was covering the road just around the corner from us. So I went back home, told my wife, we got in the cars and probably just got through.
NORRIS: My house is under water, completely under water, like nothing so there's nowhere else to go is there?
KUHN: Jesse Dangerfield is an expectant young mother arriving at an evacuation center at a Brisbane stadium.
NORRIS: We were one of the lucky ones. Everyone thought that it wasn't actually going to happen. So we were just like, no, I'm out of here. I don't want to stay here. And then it kind of felt like we were like trapped, because we didn't know where the high ground was, and it was just scary.
KUHN: Anna Bligh, the premier, or governor, of the northeastern state of Queensland, predicted that on Thursday, Brisbane residents would awake see unprecedented damage to their city, although, she noted, perhaps not quite as apocalyptic as predicted.
NORRIS: Brisbane has had a slight reprieve with the peak tomorrow expected slightly lower, but nevertheless an event that is going to devastate the city with anywhere between 20 and 30,000 people affected.
KUHN: Bligh added she was confident that Queensland's battered economy, including its key mining and agriculture sectors, could bounce back quickly from this major setback.
NORRIS: We are a large part of the Australian economy, and we're seeing some of our major industries catastrophically affected. The coal industry will take several weeks, and in some cases months, to get back to full production.
KUHN: Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Brisbane