Tens of thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate their homes by yesterday and many more had been told to prepare to flee as parts of Australia’s southeast coast were inundated by the worst flooding in decades that has claimed at least nine lives.
Scores of residents, some with pets, spent hours trapped on their roofs in the past few days by a fast-rising river in the town of Lismore in northern New South Wales state.
The body of a woman in her 80s was yesterday found by a neighbor in her Lismore home, a police statement said. There were no details of how she died.
Photo: AP / Queensland Fire and Emergency Services
MANHOLE TRAP
There were concerns that householders who climbed into their roof spaces through ceiling manholes could become trapped by rising waters.
A police rescue officer had saved an elderly woman from such a roof space that was almost filled with water, Lismore State Emergency Service Commander Steve Patterson said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“He dived in through a window, noticed the manhole cover was open, when he checked, found a 93-year-old lady with about 20cm left of space before the water hit the top,” Patterson told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Dozens of vehicles were trapped on a bridge in the nearby town of Woodburn over Monday night with both the bridge’s approaches submerged.
Up to 50 people were rescued from the bridge early yesterday, officials said.
“We had no capabilities to get them off in the dark so we just had to make sure that they bunkered down, and we went in this morning and got them all out,” Woodburn State Emergency Services Commander Ashley Slapp said.
The flood waters were moving south into New South Wales from Queensland state in the worst disaster in the region since what was described as a once-in-a-century event in 2011.
New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said there had been 1,000 rescues in his state by yesterday and more than 6,000 calls for authorities to help.
Perrottet said 40,000 people had been ordered to evacuate, while 300,000 others had been placed under evacuation warnings.
“We’ll be doing everything ... We can to get everybody to safety and get these communities right across our state back on their feet as quickly as possible,” Perrottet said.
Government meteorologist Jonathan Howe described the amount of recent rainfall in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland as “astronomical.”
Eight of the nine deaths of the current disaster were in Queensland.
Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said emergency services held grave concerns for a man aged in his 70s who fell from his moored yacht in the state capital, Brisbane ,into a swollen river on Saturday and for a 76-year-old man who disappeared with his vehicle in flood water northwest of Brisbane on Sunday.
FIRE RISK
The extraordinary rainfall comes as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported this week that vast swathes of Australia have already lost 20 percent of its rainfall and the country’s fire risk has gone beyond worst-case scenarios developed just a few years ago.
Australia’s hottest and driest year on record was 2019, which ended with devastating wildfires across southeast Australia.
The fires directly killed 33 people and another 400 people were killed by the smoke.
The fires also destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed 19 million hectares of farmland and forests.
However, two La Nina weather patterns have since brought above-average rainfall to the same regions.
Lesley Hughes, an Australian academic and former lead author of the IPCC assessment reports in 2007 and 2015, said climate change was expected to overwhelm government systems such as flood responses.
“We can see that our emergency services are struggling already to cope with the floods in northern New South Wales with people stranded on roofs without food for more than 24 hours,” Hughes said.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS