Australia flood clean-up starts, tough task ahead

Australia's third-largest city started cleaning up stinking mud and debris on Friday after some of the country's worst floods on record, but in a sign of the task ahead, it could take six months to pump flood waters out of Queensland's coal mines.


Many suburbs in the state's capital Brisbane, a city of two million people, remained submerged after floodwaters inundated the riverside city on Thursday.


The floods in Queensland, which started in December 2010, have killed 19 people. Tens of thousands of homes have been inundated with floodwater and more than 60 people are missing.


"Right now we are still rescuing people, we are still evacuating people. So we are right in the middle of the emergency response," said Queensland state premier Anna Bligh, who has described Brisbane as looking like a war zone.
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