 Are we right? Are we right people? Yes? Thank you. The situation across Queensland's southeast continues to deteriorate. In relation to the Lockyer Valley I can now confirm that the number of people unaccounted for or missing now has been revised down to 66. Thankfully we've found five people safe but we have confirmed one for the death. That brings the total death toll in this incident to nine. Tragically the police believe that that will climb and could be almost or more than double that number. We continue to hold very grave fears for the people who are missing. To everyone who has lost a loved one, you are in our thoughts and the thoughts of all Queenslanders and Australians. We know that you are going through just horridness circumstances. The majority of those who are missing are missing from the Murphy's Creek, Grantham and Withcott areas. In Grantham and Withcott we have police and search and rescue teams on the ground, undertaking search and rescue activities. We do have police on the ground in Murphy's Creek but they have been unable to continue their search and rescue because the weather has significantly worsened in Murphy's Creek. In Forest Hill, which is a town of between 300 and 400 people between Lately and Gatton, we have seen dramatic scenes this afternoon with 300 people being airlifted and evacuated to Gatton. They are being evacuated on Black Hawk helicopters. My last report was 126 people remaining on the ground still to be airlifted out of Forest Hill. So almost all of Forest Hill being evacuated, some 300 people. In relation to the Brisbane and Ipswich area and the Wyvernhoe catchment, I'm afraid we have some very bad news this afternoon. Ipswich and Brisbane are now facing their greatest threat and their toughest test in more than 35 years. The latest advice that I have in relation to the inflows in the Wyvernhoe is that we can expect overnight tonight in Brisbane to see flood levels reach about three metres. By Wednesday high tide tomorrow afternoon at about three o'clock, we will see it at 4.5 metres and the current predictions indicate that the river will continue to rise into Thursday with flood levels expected higher than the 1974 peak. The flood reached a peak of 5.45 metres in 1975. Our current modelling shows that with continued rain into Thursday, we will see the levels of the river reach higher than that. In Ipswich, we expect to see overnight with continued heavy rainfall in the region that by midnight tonight, the river levels in Ipswich will reach around the 18 to 19 metre mark and peaking sometime during Wednesday at around 21 to 22 metres. By comparison, the 1974 peak was 20.6 metres. So in both Ipswich and in Brisbane, we are anticipating flood levels across the areas of 74 levels and above. As I said, the situation continues to deteriorate and I have to say that I understand for many, many people in Ipswich and in Brisbane, particularly those who endured the 1974 flood, that we are now in a very frightening experience. Can I appeal to everybody that it's times like this where we all need to make an effort to stay calm, to be patient and to stick together. Now is the time to be checking on neighbours, on elderly people in your neighbourhood, to be checking on family and friends. If you live on high ground in Brisbane, now is the time to be reaching out to friends and offering help and offering where necessary a bed for the night over the coming two to three days. For those who are living in some of the lower lying areas and the identified suburbs, now is the time to be making whatever preparations you can and I would encourage you to be overly cautious. It's better to be inconvenienced and find that your preparations were not necessary than the alternative. For those who are unlikely to be directly affected, I think the entire city of Brisbane, the Ipswich region and most of the South East needs to prepare ourselves for enormous disruption. We will anticipate that and we're starting to see it now, that over the next couple of days we will see workplaces closed and unreachable. We will see major shopping centres closed, flooded and cut off. People need to be taking preparations and keeping off the roads as much as possible. An evacuation strategy is being prepared and an evacuation centre is being activated at the show grounds at the RNA. This centre can take up to 3000 people and bedding and provisions are being provided into that centre this afternoon. Given the emerging information and I know that there's been other data in the public arena earlier this afternoon, you get a sense I think of just how quickly this is changing, how rapidly the rainfall that continues into the Lockyer Valley and into the Wyvernhoe catchment, how quickly that is changing the modelling. Given the seriousness of this situation and given how quickly the data is changing, we will now hold two hourly media conferences and those media conferences will be attended by myself, the minister, the commissioner or deputy commissioner of police. We will be holding those press conferences throughout this evening and two hourly tomorrow and more frequently if necessary if further data comes to hand. I might turn to Ian Stewart, the deputy commissioner, to make some further comments but can I just acknowledge we are facing one of our toughest ever tests. We will only pass this test if we are calm, if we are patient with each other, if we are patient holding on phone lines and if we listen carefully to the instructions we are being given. Now is not a time for panic, it is a time for us to stick together, to reach out to each other and to listen to the advice from our emergency workers. Ian. Thank you Premier. As you were aware earlier today, a statewide disaster declaration was made by the Premier and our minister for the lower half of the state, that includes obviously all of the greater Brisbane area. We would hope that police and emergency workers don't have to use any of those powers because as the Premier said, this is not the time to balk when you are asked to leave or asked to support emergency workers in the way that we will help prepare the city for this certain flood event which will hit us over the next couple of days. I think one of the really key messages is that this is the information with the best information we have at the moment. It is a changing and a moving feast. We would hope that we don't have to revise these figures up, but that is a real possibility depending on the inflows into the dam area and the rain systems that are currently above that the Wyvernhoe Dam catchment. So by giving you regular updates we hope to prepare the city and the surrounding areas including obviously Ipswich for what is going to be a significant emergency for our community of Queensland. Premier Michael Usher from Channel 9. What you are talking about is so overwhelming how you are equipped to handle this. You have got the resources and many people you are talking about are being cut off. Can you get the emergency services to them to help them? We are bringing additional personnel to the task over the next couple of days to Ipswich and Brisbane. These are the sorts of events that our emergency staff prepare for on a regular basis. You have seen them out there doing an extraordinary job in places like Rockhampton and Emerald. They are up to this task but they will need your cooperation. If you are asked to leave your property please do not make the job harder for our emergency workers. They will not ask you to do this unless it is absolutely necessary. Are you now talking about it? Is this beyond what is being planned for? This is an extreme event. The emergency services plan for these sort of events on a regular basis. They hope never to have to put those plans into place but they are ready and prepared to do so when we get confirmation as we have in the last half hour of this sort of an event. I might invite Bruce Grady from Emergency Management Queensland to give you a bit more detail about the sort of preparation and training that has led up to this sort of ability. And could we address also in there the number of homes that might be affected in the Brisbane area? They were talking about six and a half thousand homes being flooded. Do we know whether that is on the money or not? The number of homes is currently being assessed by Brisbane City Council. They have the plans for that. I think the sorts of numbers you are talking about are at the lower end. There certainly be a lot more properties than that affected whether the water gets over their floorboards or not is the work that the Brisbane City Council is currently doing. In terms of preparations, we do plan for devastating events. We've run scenarios as little as six to eight weeks ago where that was based on numbers around the flood in 1890 which was bigger than 74. So it's always difficult to deal with these things because they unfold so rapidly. But the plans are in place. We're confident that people know their roles, their responsibilities, what to do. It's now as Deputy Commissioner Stuart said, it's time for the community to come together and for us to all pull in the same direction. The emergency services can't do this job by themselves and they need the cooperation of the community to make an effective response. Because on that point Premier, you're talking about nine confirmed deaths now and that is heartbreaking. But you're saying that might double? Yes, I'll invite Deputy Commissioner to make some further comments. But police obviously have a number of reports which they are seeking to absolutely confirm. And on the basis of that, they believe that these numbers could double or even a little higher than that on current known information. So I do think we need to brace ourselves for a significant death toll here. And as I've said earlier, there are a number of children involved in this incident. So it is a heartbreaking toll already from these waters and a very powerful reminder to us all. Particularly people here in Brisbane and Ipswich as these waters make their way through our streets. Keep your children away from parks, gutters, drains. Keep your older children from jumping into waters and take extra care driving on our roads. Thanks Premier. Earlier this morning we had 72 people unaccounted for in the Lockyer area. Predominally Grantham and the Murphy's Creek areas. We have been able to trace five of those, sorry six of those people so we're down to 66 who we are still working on. And whilst that's a wonderful outcome we have grave concerns particularly in the Murphy's Creek area where because of this, the very severe weather events that are still occurring there, the safety of our officers and the ability for them to go in and check isolated houses and also the creek area, it's become very difficult for us. Can you get them in or is it just too hard and too risky right now? It's too risky and we've had to hold back our staff with the planning at the moment being more for tomorrow morning when we hope that the weather will have abated enough to make it safe. I mean the creeks are still overflowing, it's still flooding in that area. It is a very very high risk for our people. In any of these areas are there stranded people that you just can't get to that you're aware are stuck on roofs or in buildings? We don't believe so but we can't absolutely discount that. Obviously we've been checking a range of other areas in the Locky Valley throughout the day, the areas that are more safe for our people to operate in and at Grantham that is one of the areas that we have been able to enter some of the homes but there are still places in Grantham because of the flooding, the continued flooding, we haven't been able to check in some of the houses that have been damaged or destroyed. What about the operation of Forest Hill which is quite extraordinary being 300 people out and mostly airlifted is that still going? Absolutely it's still as I believe right at this moment we are still taking people out of Forest Hill and that was caused by the fact that the waters rose there quite suddenly this morning and it was felt the best way to manage their safety was to actually evacuate them all. What is the situation with the School of Grantham? At Grantham where we had people earlier today, Grantham actually has a safe area there is an area that's above the water and we're quite in fact I think there's about 60 people currently in that safe area and we're quite happy for them to stay and they're quite happy to be there. Is there room as they have to evacuate from the evacuation? Well we're hoping not but that will depend on services as well I mean water, sewage, power, all of those issues are going to be critical in the next few days. We are hoping that once this rain event abates and we hope that that will happen over the next 24 hours that's what we're being told we're hoping that people will be able to access that area by road. The difficulty we're then going to have of course is that if more bodies are located in any of these areas it becomes a crime scene and we have to then go in with a full investigation process. So this is not going to be fixed tonight or tomorrow or the next day and all of this time is then taken up in terms of the on-flow of the water down through Ipswich and Brisbane which we have to manage as well. What is the declaration of the disaster zone mean for police and mega services? You get more powers with this? That's exactly right and that is the only time that we you sorry that's the only reason that the declaration is made to provide us special powers to forcibly evacuate people if necessary in the best interest of their safety in the community as a whole. It also just to add to that Sue it also provides with other powers to do whatever is necessary for safety for example in the evacuation at Theodore last week emergency service workers chainsawed down electricity poles and didn't have to seek authority to do so. So the powers are quite extraordinary they are there so that emergency workers can bulldoze buildings to get things out of the way if they need to. Can I just make another comment we've all watched over the last couple of weeks as water gradually rose in rivers affecting Emerald, Rockhampton, St George for example. In all of those events if you all think back rain had actually stopped in the catchment area and so we could predict with a degree of precision what was happening. The difference here and why it's moving so rapidly is we are seeing extraordinarily heavy rainfalls continuing into the catchment area and the Bureau indicated to this afternoon that they expect that rain to continue for at least the next six to 12 hours. We're starting to see a couple of small breaks every now and then which indicates it might be starting to break up but heavy rainfalls for the next six to 12 hours is partly what into the catchment not so much here in Brisbane but in the catchment that is what is driving some of the rapid change in this modelling and the dramatically deteriorating situation. Am I asking into it? Certainly in the main obviously we have strategic planning cells with us embedded in our areas that are planning and managing all of this process but the major thing that the military is providing is the heavy lift air assets. We've also used their vehicles, their very unique vehicles to try and get into very difficult terrain so that's been part of it and we've borrowed extra vehicles forward drives in particular from them at that that is the best support that they can provide us at the moment. Well we have a large number of their personnel but mainly in the planning and logistics phase. Premier just finally for the people who are very naturally feeling quite anxious and frightened out there you addressed that earlier what are you saddened right now who are listening to you just wanting to know exactly what to do? To the people here in the southeast who are facing an anxious time in the next day or two days in Brisbane and in Ipswich I understand that you may be very frightened by what is happening around you. What we need now is calm and I am here to reassure you that our emergency response is doing everything it can to keep you updated to protect your homes your properties and your neighbourhoods but we do have a very serious natural disaster on our doorstep and we will all have to work together. Our commitment to you is that we will provide you with information as regularly as we get it as soon as we know it we'll be telling it to you and to that end we'll be here every two hours to update sometimes there won't be much to say that's new but other times there might be quite dramatic information so people should certainly be listening to media and I thank the media for the job they're doing today to make sure people know what's happening. Okay thank you.