Flood emergency prompts widespread warnings in Australia's Queensland

Sydney, Jan 13 (IANS) Flood warnings have been issued across the northeast Australian state of Queensland as ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji continues to cause widespread intense rainfall.

As of Tuesday morning local time, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) had multiple flood warnings in place for rivers and catchments in central, northeast and northwest Queensland after some regions received more than a year's worth of rainfall in one week.

In the small town of Clermont, about 750 km northwest of the state capital of Brisbane, residents in low-lying areas were on Monday afternoon ordered to move to higher ground.

Over 300 properties remained without electricity on Tuesday in the town of around 3,000 people, which has been cut off by floodwaters.

Authorities said on Tuesday that three people were rescued from floodwaters in Clermont overnight.

Two men were picked up by swift water rescue boats around 2:40 a.m. local time after getting trapped on the roof of their car in floodwaters while a third person was rescued from the roof of another vehicle a few hours later.

In a separate incident, two other people were eventually able to make their own way to safety after also becoming stranded on the roof of a vehicle near Clermont on Monday night.

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji made landfall on Queensland's northeast coast on Sunday morning, bringing damaging winds and heavy rainfall, and is now moving west across the state.

David Crisafulli, the premier of Queensland, told reporters on Monday that communities in western Queensland that already received significant rainfall earlier in January should stay on high alert as further rain there could be devastating, Xinhua news agency reported.

Crisafulli said that there have been no reported human casualties, but that almost 50,000 head of livestock are missing or presumed dead in the floods.