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Five people have been pulled from fast-rising floodwaters as south-east Queensland is hammered with heavy rain.
Firefighter Jason Mannix said crews were travelling from another job when they spotted a woman in trouble on a flooded causeway in Oxley, in Brisbane's south.
"She was on her own and was panicking and had said that she can't swim and she can't open the car or anything because the water was too fast and too far up on the door," he said.
Mr Mannix said while the crew carried out the rescue, they located a man trapped in a car on the same flooded causeway.
Meanwhile, emergency services performed three more rescues in the neighbouring suburb of Durack.
Mr Mannix said it all happened in a 30-minute timeframe within a one-kilometre radius, in an area known for its tendency to flood.
He said it was lucky no-one was injured in the fast-moving water.
"They were obviously a little embarrassed, and [it was] a good lesson for them," he said.
"There are plenty of campaigns around informing people not to drive through flooded causeways — but obviously a lot of people still haven't heeded those warnings."
Power cut to thousands of properties
It was unclear what damage, if any, the storm had caused on Monday night.
However thousands of homes in south-east Queensland were left without power as intense rain battered the region and caused flash flooding on Monday night.
More than 7,500 properties, mostly in the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Logan areas, had lost power at 8:45pm, Energex said on its website.
Nearly a third of the outages were in the Logan suburb of Marsden, while Tugun on the Gold Coast and Fairfield in Brisbane also had more than 1,000 properties without power.
80mm of rain in an hour
A severe thunderstorm warning for heavy rain was issued for parts of Ipswich, Redland City, Brisbane, Logan, Somerset, Toowoomba, Lockyer Valley, Gold Coast and Moreton Bay.
Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) spokesman Julian De Morton said a number of places had recorded rainfall in excess of 60 millimetres in an hour.
Blackbutt, in the South Burnett, experienced the heaviest deluge, with 83mm recorded.
Forestdale and Hillcrest in Logan both recorded hourly totals of 71mm, while Forest Hill in the Lockyer Valley experienced 69mm of rainfall.
Mr De Morton said the heavy falls and thunderstorms were caused by a south-easterly change late in the day.
"They've moved through the Gold Coast Hinterland and through the south-west of Brisbane, through areas like Boonah, Beaudesert, Laidley, Gatton and the edge of them around Toowoomba, and they've moved up north … through Brisbane and up to Kingaroy."
Topics: storm-event, weather, emergency-incidents, brisbane-4000, qld, carole-park-4300, alexandra-hills-4161, toowoomba-4350, oxley-4075, durack-4077, coolangatta-4225, ipswich-4305, gatton-4343
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