QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire & Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.</s>QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire and Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.</s>QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire & Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.</s>Authorities ordered the evacuation of large parts of a town of more than 25,000 people in eastern Australia Thursday as a storm system generated by a powerful cyclone that pummeled the northeast two days ago swept down the coast with heavy rain.

Cyclone Debbie hit as a category four storm in the north of tropical Queensland state Tuesday, smashing tourist resorts, bringing down power lines, flattening cane fields and shutting down coal mines.

“This severe weather system that began with Cyclone Debbie and is tracking down the coast is causing havoc across our state,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters in the state capital, Brisbane.

The cyclone was downgraded to a tropical low Wednesday but it was driving squalls with torrential rain across a 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) stretch of Australia’s east coast, swelling rivers and prompting widespread flood warnings.

In Lismore in the north of neighboring New South Wales state, the State Emergency Service told residents to leave because weather forecasts predicted the town’s worst flood in nearly 20 years.

The rural hub in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales is home to at least 25,000 people.

Further north, Queensland’s government closed more than 2,000 schools as sustained heavy rainfall brought flash floods to the Gold Coast tourist area and Mackay further north.

In the cyclone-hit tropical north, the poor weather has slowed what was expected to be a lengthy cleanup operation.

Military helicopters, ferries and planes brought hundreds of holidaymakers stranded on resort islands in the storm’s path to the mainland, where tens of thousands more people were still without power.

Resorts along the world-famous Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday coast bore the brunt of the storm Tuesday with wind gusts stronger than 260 kph (160 mph).

About 2,500 insurance claims have been filed, but Queensland’s top two insurers, Suncorp Group Ltd and RACQ, said it was too early to put a dollar figure on the damage.

One female tourist was killed in a car crash Monday that police said was the result of wild weather as Cyclone Debbie approached. Another two people were injured as the storm passed through.</s>QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire & Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.</s>BRISBANE: Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from towns in two Australian states as authorities warned Friday there could be deaths from severe flooding caused by ex-tropical cyclone.

Category four Cyclone Debbie hit northeastern Australia on Tuesday between Bowen and Airlie Beach in Queensland state, ripping up trees, washing boats onto land and causing widespread damage.

Debbie was downgraded to a tropical low as it tracked southeast, but continued to pack damaging gusts and dump huge amounts of rain all the way down the eastern coast to New South Wales state, south of Queensland, and Sydney.

Lismore near the NSW coast was hard hit, with the State Emergency Service (SES) warning of three-metre (9.8-feet) high flood levels in the town.

“Overnight we had about 130 flood rescues, most of which services were unable to get to. So… as we start to go out and try to find people that made those calls overnight, there could be some very distressing news,” SES acting Deputy Commissioner Mark Morrow told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“There could be people overnight that perished in that flood, we don’t know at this stage.”

Other towns subject to evacuation orders include Tweed Heads, Kingscliff and Murwillumbah.

Further north in Queensland, the popular tourist city of Gold Coast and other nearby regions were also inundated by water.

Bureau of Meteorology regional director Bruce Gunn said there had been widespread rain of between 100-300mm falls over the last two days in southeast Queensland where the Gold Coast is located.

“In terms of what happened in the last 24 or 48 hours, we have seen some pretty big rainfall totals,” he told Brisbane’s Courier Mail.

“There is still that strong risk around the Gold Coast.”

In the areas hit by Debbie, including Bowen, Mackay and the Whitsundays, some 50,000 people were still without power, Queensland officials said.

The military has mobilised 1,300 soldiers to help assess the full extent of damage and aid the clean-up, with helicopters and planes deploying to restore infrastructure and supply emergency food, water and fuel. – AFP</s>Communities along Australia's east coast have been evacuated as floodwaters sparked by the remnants of a powerful cyclone poured into roads and threatened to inundate homes across the region.

Officials told thousands of residents of low-lying communities in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales to move to higher ground on Friday as floodwaters from rain-swollen rivers swamped the area.

The region has been subjected to days of drenching rains after Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Queensland coast on Tuesday with winds up to 260 kilometers (160 miles) an hour. The storm quickly weakened as it moved inland, but continued to dump rain across Queensland and New South Wales through Thursday.

Emergency officials have rescued more than 200 people from floodwaters.</s>Flooding in the wake of Cyclone Debbie, which barreled into Australia's northeast coast on Tuesday, has displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes, cut power to at least 100,000, and on Friday led authorities to fear that some might have drowned in the rising waters.

The previous day some towns in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland had received three times the amount of rain they would normally get in a month, the BBC reports .

"There could be people overnight that perished in that flood, we don't know at this stage," Mark Morrow of the New South Wales State Emergency Service told the BBC. "There could be some very distressing news."

Australia's Federal and State governments declared five areas in New South Wales as natural disaster zones and major flood warnings remained active on three local rivers. Central and southeastern Queensland towns were also inundated, with swollen rivers in Queensland expected to pose a continued threat over the coming days, The Guardian reports .

Damage assessments are ongoing in northern Queensland, where the Category 4 Cyclone Debbie made landfall earlier this week. Of about 2,000 assessments already carried out, authorities determined the cyclone had rendered 270 properties unlivable.</s>QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire & Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.</s>QUEENSLAND, Australia – Some Queenslanders didn’t take police warnings to stay out of flood waters very seriously — until a bull shark washed up in the street.

Northeastern Australia is still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which swept across the Queensland coast on Tuesday, causing widespread damage with winds up to 114 mph.

It has since been downgraded to a low pressure system but is still moving slowly down the eastern coast, dumping many inches of rain.

No deaths have been recorded so far, but areas of southeast Queensland have been hit with extensive flooding.

Australian emergency services have repeatedly warned people to stay out of the flood waters, after photos and videos emerged of locals playing in flooded streets, and even doing some surfing.

But the discovery of a huge dead bull shark in floodwaters near Ayr, just south of Townsville, is likely to give some residents pause.

The photo was taken by emergency service crews checking on flooded roads in the area. Queensland Fire & Emergency were among those to tweet out the discovery, saying, “Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!”

Cyclone Debbie slammed into the Far North Queensland coast as a Category 3 cyclone, the most powerful to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

The International Space Station captured the swirling clouds in the hours before Debbie hit.

All schools in southeast Queensland were closed on Thursday and Friday as the storm continued its journey south.

Social media showed local children taking full advantage of the day off, swimming and playing in the heavy rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rainfall is expected to continue for about the next 24 hours and some residents were preparing sandbags to avoid any further flood damage to their properties.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for residents affected by flooding and storms to stay indoors and reassured those already affected that help was on the way.
Authorities of New South Wales issue a State Emergency Service for the towns of Murwillumbah and Lismore, and at least 12 flood rescues are underway as former Cyclone Debbie moves south from north Queensland.