Thousands flee Australian town as flood fears grow

Thousands of people fled their homes in Australia's southeast as fears grew that a levee holding back the swollen Murrumbidgee River would burst. Floods have hit three eastern states this week, sweeping two men to their deaths after they attempted to cross waterways in cars while inundating hundreds of homes and causing millions of dollars in damage. More than 8,000 people were ordered to evacuate in the New South Wales town of Wagga Wagga where the Murrumbidgee is predicted to peak at 10.9 metres (36 feet), right on the levee's limit. "The levee may hold, it may not hold," State Emergency Service deputy commissioner Dieter Geske told the Seven Network as the river rushed towards a level not seen since 1844. "Should the levee fail and the water enters the CBD, and other areas in Wagga Wagga, then people need to be in the evacuation centre, not in their homes or businesses." Wagga Wagga has been hit by several significant floods since the earliest European settlement in the 1840s, and officials said residents had responded well to the latest evacuation order. "I knew where my house lies -- if the levee were to overflow my street, it was pretty quickly going to go -- so I went," Melina Skidmore told state broadcaster ABC. Officials said the flood would peak in Wagga Wagga later Tuesday, but there were fears that the waters would create an ongoing emergency for weeks to come as the waters gushed to communities downstream. Around New South Wales state about 13,000 people have been asked to leave their homes due to flooding, with more than 250 properties already inundated and a number of rural communities isolated by the rising waters. Flooding has also hit rural regions in Victoria and Queensland states. The National Farmers' Federation said while it was too early to put a cost on the disaster, cotton crops had been damaged, as well as grain silos, while many livestock had been swept away. Eastern Australia was hit by devastating floods in early 2011 which claimed more than 30 lives, flooded thousands of homes and left vast swathes of the country swamped, including the Queensland capital Brisbane.