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Fresh flood warning issued in Australia as PM visits
TOWNSVILLE, Australia, Feb 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Heavy rain continued to pelt
Australia’s flood-ravaged northeast Tuesday, prompting the authorities to
warn of further flash flooding in the hours ahead.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison toured the region where “once-in-a-century”
floods have inundated thousands of homes and closed airports and schools,
leaving cars and houses submerged.
“It’s just going to be tough, going to be tough for a while,” Morrison
said, expressing sympathy for young families who had lost their homes.
“The real work is to make sure that they can get through the clean-up and
rebuild their lives.”
In hard-hit Townsville, more than 650 people have been evacuated from
their homes and about 11,000 houses remained without power Tuesday. Around
9,000 more have asked for help.
Even as stormwaters receded in some areas, there seems little prospect of
an immediate respite from what locals call the “Big Wet”.
“We expect this active monsoon to remain active for the coming days,
potentially easing over the weekend, so there is an end in sight,” said
Richard Wardle of Queensland’s Bureau of Meteorology.
“But we are expecting further periods of heavy rainfall, some of it very
heavy, about the north-east tropics for the next few days… with that there
is the real elevated risk of flash flooding.”
Local gym instructor Rebecca Chilmaid described the scale of the
devastation, of people left “without clothes, cars, their homes, everything”.
“People and businesses have lost everything,” she told AFP. “I sit and
struggle to keep tears from falling thinking about it.”
Australia’s tropical north typically experiences heavy rains during the
monsoon season, but the recent downpour has seen some areas get a year’s
worth of rainfall in just a week.
“Last night it was crazy,” Bluewater resident Michael Nieminen, some 30
kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Townsville, told national broadcaster ABC.
“We had another lot of flash flooding come through, we had water come
right up in the backyard again, similar to last week, not as high, luckily,
but a lot of rain and a lot of water upstream,” he added.
The authorities were forced to open floodgates of a major dam late Sunday,
unleashing what they called “dangerous and high velocity flows”.
As waters began to recede Tuesday in some areas, authorities were warning
people of the dangers of returning home, not least thanks to the risk of
encountering crocodiles.
“Do not go swimming in those floodwaters,” Queensland Premier Annastacia
Palaszczuk said.
“And when the clean-up begins, you need to make sure that you are wearing
closed-in boots and that you do not have any scratches or anything exposed.”
BSS/AF/MSY/1037 hrs