Military evacuates flood-hit residents

WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s military was deployed to evacuate hundreds of residents from flood-hit areas of the South Island yesterday as heavy rains washed away bridges and cut roads.

Rivers burst their banks as a weather system dumped 400mm of rain in two days, an amount meteorologists said exceeded the rainfall so far this year in some areas.

Authorities declared a state of emergency in the Canterbury region, one of the nation’s farming hubs. The New Zealand Defence Force said one of its helicopters rescued three people at Ashburton,plucking one man from a tree and an elderly couple from the roof of a car.

Ashburton mayor Neil Brown said the town of 35 000 had been cut off.

About 300 homes had been evacuated.