Nine people have died after Christmas storms pounded Australia’s eastern seaboard, authorities said yesterday, including two women who were washed through a storm drain.
Thunderstorms and destructive winds have in the past few days battered the states of Victoria and Queensland — capsizing boats, sparking flash floods and tearing down concrete powerlines.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has warned that coastal regions in Queensland were still at risk of “dangerous” storms, “life-threatening” floods, “giant” hail and “damaging” winds.
Photo: AFP / handout / Victoria Police
Three women were “exploring” a large storm drain in the rural Queensland town of Gympie when they were swept away by floodwaters on Tuesday afternoon, police said.
By yesterday, police divers had recovered the bodies of two of the women, aged 40 and 46. The third, aged 46, survived after she was washed onto the banks of the nearby Mary River.
Eleven people were tossed into the ocean when a 12m yacht capsized in Moreton Bay during an annual fishing trip near Brisbane.
Police yesterday said that three men, aged 48, 59 and 69, had drowned, while eight survivors had been scooped from the water and rushed to hospital.
Queensland Police Acting Chief Superintendent Andrew Pilotto said those who were rescued were lucky to survive.
“The storm was still raging when they were rescued,” Pilotto said. “It would have been very difficult to survive in those conditions anywhere.”
Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll blamed “extraordinarily difficult weather” for the tragedies.
“It has been a very tragic 24 hours due to the weather,” Carroll told reporters.
The body of a nine-year-old girl was found after she went missing in floodwaters on Brisbane’s outskirts, police said, while a 59-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Utility company Energex said it was racing to restore electricity to more than 80,000 homes in the state.
“How strong were those storms? Enough to snap multiple concrete poles supporting high-voltage lines,” it wrote on social media.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles said the downing of concrete power lines was “pretty significant and unprecedented.”
The damage from Cyclone Jasper, which hit the state earlier this month, and the latest thunderstorms could be in “the billions,” Miles told a news conference.
Meanwhile in Victoria, a woman was found dead late on Tuesday evening after flash floods swamped a regional campground in Buchan, 350km east of the state capital, Melbourne.
A man was killed after he was struck by a falling tree branch in Caringal, 180km east of Melbourne.
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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