Officials last night revealed that an unnamed 24-year-old man was swept into a storm drain while inspecting his father's flooded property in Durack, just south of the city, during the inundation.
The man's body was found by police after being washed through the drain and surfacing on the other side. He has not yet been named.
His death prompted Anna Bligh, the state's premier, to reissue warnings about entering the murky floodwater.
"Right now we don't want to see any more loss of life and we don't want to see any injuries," she said.
"I do understand how keen everybody is to get back into their houses, to go out and have a look at what's happened to their neighbourhoods but these are still rapidly moving, swirling, dangerous waters."
As the flood peaked on the Brisbane River yesterday there was a raft of warnings the dangers had not been banished.
But for the most part Miss Bligh could be quietly relieved that individual heroics were more prevalent than fatalities. Pilot Doug Hislop and engineer Peter Fenton from the tug boat Maris made all the city's front pages.
The boat battled for hours to resist a large chunk of the popular Brisbane Riverwalk, a walkway suspended over the river that was torn from its foundations, threatening the Gateway Bridge, a major route in and out of the city.
The boat pushed and pushed against the heavy section in the churning torrent, finally managing to edge the walkway out of the path of the bridge's main support pylon.
"We realised that it would have to come through the Gateway Bridge straight so we headed out to get it," Mr Hislop said.
"Nobody called us or asked is to do it. There was no time to talk to anyone. As it was we only caught it about half a kilometre above the bridge."
Miss Bligh later hailed the men as "local heroes", but they are not alone in carrying out extraordinary feats on the river.
Two men were plucked from the water after their yacht broke its mooring and sank as it drifted away at high speed.
With no police boats in sight to help them, two men in a rubber dinghy headed into the torrent to pull the men to safety.
