Damage in North Bundaberg following the floods. Picture: Mark Calleja Source: The Courier-Mail
FLOOD-affected residents have poured into North Bundaberg for the first time to find their houses ripped apart, swallowed by the earth or smashed into pieces.
At 5.40pm: POLICE have made the decision to open the Burnett Traffic Bridge as early as 6am tomorrow morning.
Residents will now be able to drive into North Bundaberg to see their flood ravaged properties.
The bridge will be open both ways but will be closed again at 6pm.
Police will be patrolling the area and are asking that residents have patience and drive to the conditions.
Denise Ryan at her mother's property in Thornhill St, North Bundaberg, where flood waters washed the house off the stumps. Picture: Mark Calleja
Many may not have seen their homes since the area was devastated by floodwaters earlier in the week.
At 3.20pm: Police checkpoints at the Burnett Bridge ensured only residents crossed over to the exclusion zone to assess the damage and collect possessions.
Simone Dench at her home in North Bundaberg. Picture: Mark Calleja
Thick sludgy mud or mountains of sand smother yards and are layered through houses, shops and hotels.
Denise Ryan, 64, discovered only wooden stumps where her elderly mother's highset Queenslander should have been on Thornhill Street.
The force of the water appears to have smashed and splintered the entire house onto nonexistence, with pieces strewn far and wide.
A kitchen window sat wedged against a tree on the hockey field opposite the road but there was not much else to show of the family home of more than 60 years.
Simone Dench returns to her ruined home in North Bundaberg. Picture: Mark Calleja
"We found her steps all the way over on Hinkler Avenue. She had steps at the front and steps at the back," Ms Ryan said.
"We've seen guttering. We found a roof that might be hers. I'm presuming it's mum's because everyone else has their roof.
"We saw a bedspread off her bed is hanging in a tree and it's in shreds, and another bedspread is wrapped around a tree.
"There's really nothing we can salvage."
Evacuated Bundaberg residents told to expect the worst ahead of their return to flood damaged homes today. Sky News
Pregnant mum-of-five Simone Dench, who is due in five weeks, has had almost every possession destroyed by mud and water and went silent with grief.
But she found her precious keepsakes - hospital name tags from each of her children's births and locks of baby hair - completely untouched in a tin box.
"All the stuff from when my babies were born, everything, the umbilical cords, everything," said Mrs Dench.
On the wall was hanging a collage from husband Colin, memorialising their unborn daughter Abby Rose who died in a miscarriage.
DAMAGE CLAIM: A Bundaberg resident inspects his flooded home by kayak. Picture: AFP
"It wasnt touched. It was on the wall," she wept.
Residents had been told they were not to clean but only to look and collect some possessions.
However many could not stand the sight of the mess and rolled up their sleeves to get stuck into it.
A curfew has been set for about 6pm by which time residents should exit the exclusion zone.
At 1.30pm: Sightseers and sticky beaks have been told to stay out of flood-hit Bundaberg.
Superintendent Rowan Bond, the disaster management co-ordinator, said the area was still too dangerous to handle a large influx of non-residents.
Locals in the hardest hit suburb in Queensland's flood crisis only started returning home to assess damage on Saturday morning.
Police opened the Burnett Bridge to north Bundaberg residents at 6am (AEST).
Mr Bond said the clean-up had begun in some areas and anyone wanting to help needed to be in the company of a property owner.
"If you want your friends and relatives to help, the owners need to be at the region and introduce the people going through," Mr Bond told ABC radio.
"The last thing we want is sightseers and people getting in the way.
"It's still a very dangerous place.
"There's huge potholes in the road, there's road missing and houses dislodged.
"It's no place to be sightseeing."
He said residents were still coming to grips with the sheer devastation of the area where houses and roads had been washed away.
He said there were safety issues because there were no amenities in some areas.
"They are taking in what it means for them and their future," Mr Bond said.
"It is a time (for them) to take in the sheer enormity of it, take their photos and start making arrangements for their insurance.
"The sewerage and water systems and powers systems have been wiped out in a number of areas."
North Bundaberg residents queued at a Burnett Bridge checkpoint waiting to inspect their homes for the first time.
Most found their houses coated with thick, sticky mud.
Police are checking identification before people are allowed to cross the bridge into the exclusion zone.
The suburb, where some houses have washed away and roads have collapsed into giant sinkholes, is subject to an exclusion zone.
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