Too early to assess Qld flood damage: Bligh

Flood damage to roads and bridges in central Queensland could run into millions of dollars, but Premier Anna Bligh says it is too early to say what the damage bill will.Ms Bligh visited the towns of Charleville and Emerald today, as did Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Premier Bligh says says 42 local government areas are now affected by the floods and emergency workers are keeping a careful watch.
"There is some fairly major road damage and we can't tell until the water recedes just how extensive that is," she said.
The towns of Charleville and Emerald remain on flood alert, but Charleville Mayor Mark O'Brien says he expects the levees to hold when the Warrego River peaks at six-and-a-half metres tomorrow afternoon.
"We've basically done everything that's physically possible to do," he said.
Emerald also hopes to escape flooding if predictions that the Fairbairn Dam overflow will ease early tomorrow are correct.
The Nogoa River is expected to rise to a new record of 14 metres when it peaks tomorrow afternoon.
In Emerald, State Emergency Services (SES) district manager Shane Wood says emergency workers have been working closely with hydrologists and weather forecasters monitoring the spill over from the Fairbairn Dam, which runs into the Nogoa.
Mr Wood says a wall of water measuring two-and-a-half metres is now spilling over the dam's floodgates and it will rise to three metres in the early hours of tomorrow.
But at this stage, floods are not expected.
"Everybody is still quite safe, we will have local inundation in isolated pockets of low-lying land and that's been assessed by the council as being largely the industrial land at the rear at the northern side of Emerald and will not threatened the immediate population," he said.

Flooding widespread

Meanwhile, central Queensland farmers say the devastating flooding stretches far beyond the towns of Emerald and Charleville.
Jack Dillon says there was torrential rain earlier this week at his property, about 150 kilometres north-west of Emerald.
He says flood levels in the Belyando River are at record highs and helicopters have have been used to try to prevent further stock losses.
"We've saved a lot of stock in places where you can get at them," he said.
"We've saved a lot but what really hit hard is, usually down in this country you've got four or five days to get stock out before the water got here, but when you get nine and 10 inches in one night the water's there and that's it."
Meanwhile, an earth moving contractor says floodwaters are so strong they have taken two of his bulldozers and a truck.
Operator Robert Mahady says he left the equipment, valued at more than $1 million, on a property at Serpentine, 60 kilometres west of Emerald.
He says when the rivers began rising, he tried to move the tractors but they were swamped by the Medway Creek, which feeds into Emerald's Nogoa River.
"We had three tractors there and we got one out, but the two we couldn't move and they went underwater," he said.
"The waters came up so quick, it's broken all records we ever had out that way.
"It's bigger than the '54 flood they were telling me. The waters are still up so we don't know where they are yet."