Townsville residents say local river rose higher during 2019 floods

Emergency services are remaining alert in Townsville as north Queensland’s severe weather event continues to unfold.

Transcript

00:00We're here in a Townsville suburb which is kind of on the edge of the black and the pink

00:07zone.

00:08The black zone is where people had to evacuate yesterday by midday.

00:12Now as you can see behind me, this is the Ross River.

00:16This park bench just here, the locals have just told me that there's actually a footpath

00:23in front of that and about two metres in front of that is where the river kind of usually

00:29stops because as you can see it's come up almost five to eight metres.

00:35But chatting to local residents here, they said that in the 2019 floods the river rose

00:41a lot higher.

00:42If you just spin around there you can kind of see that road there, water inundated that

00:49entire street up there.

00:52We've been speaking to residents in that suburb and they're nervous but they feel a little

00:57bit more confident than the 2019 floods.

01:02Some of them are staying put in their homes but they are telling us that they'll be ready

01:07to leave whenever emergency services tell them to do so and they're taking plenty of

01:12precautions like raising their furniture or valuable items up.

01:18So there's plenty of community spirit here though, everyone's really looking out for

01:22one another.