A three-year-old girl, who went missing from a home at Cootharaba on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, has been found dead in a dam 150m away, police say.

The girl went missing from a home at Cootharaba, near Noosa, at about 3.30pm on Monday.

Around midnight, police divers found her body in a dam approximately 150m from the house.

Her disappearance had sparked a huge search effort. The girl’s grandmother took to a local Facebook group to call for assistance in the search.

“Any help would be greatly appreciated but we [sic] just been told police won’t bring in divers until tomorrow ... so if there are any divers out there that would like to search dams tonight thanks,” she posted on Monday night.

Just after 8pm, Queensland police posted on Facebook that “significant resources” had been deployed to the search and no more people were needed.

“Police wish to offer their sincerest thanks to all the wonderful community members offering to come out and assist with the search,” Queensland police wrote.

“At this stage we have significant resources allocated to the location of this little girl, and do not require any additional people.”

Police asked the community to “keep the family in your thoughts”.

Volunteers were sent home at 9pm but police stayed on actively searching.