BRISBANE, Australia, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Flood water in Australia's third-biggest city peaked below feared catastrophic levels on Thursday but Brisbane and other devastated regions faced years of rebuilding, while fresh flood threats loom with a cyclone forecast off the coast.
Large parts of the capital of Queensland state resembled a muddy lake, with an entire waterfront cafe among the debris washing down the Brisbane River, a torrent that has flooded 12,000 homes in the city of 2 million and left 118,000 buildings without power.
With 35 suburbs flooded, many parts of Brisbane looked more like Venice as residents used boats to move about flooded streets, where traffic signs peeped above the stagnant water.
The floodwaters destroyed or damaged many parts of the city's infrastructure. One group of residents was lucky not to disappear into gushing waters when the street they were walking along collapsed.
'The ground started to move and began to rumble like thunder. We all started to run as fast as we could,' said Rebecca Bush. 'The next minute we heard this huge cracking noise that sounded like lightning had just struck. We turned around and the pathway was gone. It had completely collapsed.'
Aerial views of Brisbane showed a sea of brown water with rooftops poking through the surface.
'What I'm seeing looks more like a war zone in some places,' Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
'All I could see was their rooftops ... underneath every single one of those rooftops is a horror story,' she told reporters after surveying the disaster from the air.
'This morning as I look across not only the capital city, but three-quarters of my state, we are facing a reconstruction effort of post-war proportions,' Bligh said.
An emotional Bligh said her state, reliant on farming and mining in rugged outback regions, would recover regardless of the cost and estimates that three quarters of it -- an area the size of South Africa -- was now officially a disaster zone.
Officials warned of the risk of further severe flooding in the coming weeks, with two months of the wet season ahead and already overflowing dams requiring seven days to empty to normal levels to cope with more heavy rains.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast that a storm in the Coral Sea off Queensland's north coast would become a cyclone in 24 to 48 hours, but while it would bring fresh rains to Queensland, it was expected to move away from the coast.
Queensland has received so much rain in the past two months the ground is fully waterlogged and dams are full, meaning any more heavy rain will further swell already flooded rivers.
The deluge has been blamed on a La Nina weather pattern in
the Pacific. Last year was Australia's third wettest on record, and weather officials forecast an above average cyclone season.
HOMES LOST IN BROWN FLOODS
The deadly floods have killed at least 19 people, of whom 12 died in the Toowoomba area, and 61 are missing, according to revised figures from the state government. Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley region, west of Brisbane, were completely devastated by tsunami-like flash flooding on Monday.
Grantham has been declared a crime zone by police due to the high death toll. Police divers searched the floodwaters on Thursday for bodies, with some 12 missing.
Damaged water treatment plants in the Lockyer Valley mean residents were running out of drinking water, prompting authorities to order 13 water trucks to bring in supplies.
The floods could cost insurers nearly $1 billion and some economists expect $6 billion in damage from the deluge that began last month in Queensland, crippling the coking coal industry and destroying roads, railways and bridges.
One central bank economist has warned the floods could cut the gross domestic product (GDP) measure of national income by as much as 1 percent, a blow that would wipe A$13 billion from the economy and put at risk the government's promise of a return to surplus in 2012-13.
The floodwater peaked at almost a metre below the level of
deadly 1974 floods in Brisbane, saving thousands of homes. Despite that, many factories and homes had only roof lines visible as residents woke.
The swollen Brisbane River was choked with debris after bursting its banks and engulfing large districts of the city the previous day. Power was cut to many areas in and around the city because of fears the waters could cause electrocutions.
Boats and river pontoons torn adrift by the deluge lay piled on river banks as brown water raced past.
REBUILD COULD TAKES YEARS
Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman on Thursday called for volunteers to start cleaning up his flooded city.
'Brisbane people today I am calling on you to really help your community. Tomorrow if the water goes down sufficiently, I want clean up crews out there across the city,' he said.
Newman warned residents that when floodwaters recede fully in coming days the threat of disease would remain as raw sewage has contaminated many flooded homes.
'I think the clean up will take many, many weeks and the reconstruction will take one and a half to two years,' he said.
Flooding, which started before Christmas, continued in other areas of Queensland, with the 6,000 residents of Goondiwindi southwest of Brisbane facing a record flood on Thursday night.
'This is a very eerie flood for us because we've had no rain,' said Goondiwindi Mayor Graeme Scheu.
South of Brisbane, neighbouring New South Wales state has also been hit by flooding, prompting evacuations of many small residential areas, while in the southeast Victoria state has experienced flash floods and landslides.
Further north, in Queensland's coal mining heartland, one of the nation's biggest export earning regions showed signs of recovery, with coal-freight operator QR National saying its worst-hit rail network could reopen in a week.
(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor in Canberra and James Regan, Narayanan Somasundaram, Michael Perry and Amy Pyett in Sydney)
(Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Daniel Magnowski) Keywords: AUSTRALIA FLOODS/ (Ed.Davies@thomsonreuters.com) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
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