Torrential rain threatens thousands

SYDNEY: Australian authorities told 40,000 people to evacuate to higher ground yesterday as a storm system generated by a Cyclone Debbie swept down the coast with heavy rain.

‘‘This severe weather system that began with Cyclone Debbie and is tracking down the coast is causing havoc across our state,’’ Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters in Brisbane.

The cyclone was downgraded to a tropical low depression on Wednesday but it was driving squalls with torrential rain across a 1200km stretch of Australia’s east coast, swelling rivers, causing flash floods and prompting authorities to tell 40,000 people to evacuate.

Parts of Brisbane had already received 226mm of rain — twice the average monthly rainfall for the capital city for March — in the 24 hours to last night.

Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland had been drenched with 486mm yesterday.

Queeensland closed more than 2000 schools yesterday.

The heavy rain saw flash flooding in many parts of the southeast, leading to more than 50 people needing to be rescued by swiftwater rescue crews.

Most were stranded in cars by flash flooding in Brisbane, and on the Gold and Sunshine coasts.

On the Sunshine Coast, a family at Tanawah, including four children aged 11 months to 9 years, was rescued from a house.

Their father, who has a broken back, has stayed at the house because he cannot be moved, but has medication and food.

Severe flash flooding at Tabragalba, near Beaudesert, saw an infant, five children and 14 adults rescued from the top of cars.

Residents in the Lockyer Valley, devastated by an inland tsunami during the 2011 floods, were told to urgently relocate as the threat of overnight flooding grew.

In Lismore inNew South Wales, the State Emergency Service told 7000 residents in lowlying areas to leave after forecasts of the town’s worst flood in nearly 20 years.

A levee protects the rural hub in the Northern Rivers region, home to at least 25,000 people, but most of those downtown planned to seek higher ground, Geoff Baxter, a barman at the Richmond Hotel said.

‘‘We’re clearing out the pub, mate, and closing it up.’’ — Reuters/AAP

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Jolly boating weather . . . Keara, Lacey and Erich Stewart paddle a kayak after floodwaters entered their back yard in Murwillumbah, NSW, near the Queensland border yesterday. Residents in the area were last night ordered to evacuate ahead of major...

PHOTO: REUTERS Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull looks at flooded areas from aboard an Australian Army helicopter near the town of Bowen, northern Queensland.