People on roofs as they avoid floods
Despair in the wake of powerful cyclone
SYDNEY: Swollen rivers flooded entire towns along Australia’s east coast on Friday, cutting roads and leaving residents clinging to roofs and floating down streets in boats after the remnants of a powerful cyclone swept through the region.
Flood sirens sounded before dawn at Lismore when the Wilsons River surged over the town’s levee. By daybreak the centre of the town of 25,000 people in the Northern Rivers region of the state of New South Wales (NSW) was underwater.
Water was at roof level and cars, bins and other debris washed down streets as residents fled and farmers drove their cattle to higher ground.
“We have everything happening. We’ve got people on rooftops. We’ve had people stuck in vans. It’s a disaster, an utter disaster,” NSW State Emergency Services Controller Ian Leckie told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.
Other towns subject to evacuation orders include Tweed Heads, Kingscliff and Murwillumbah.
The aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which pounded Queensland state on Tuesday, smashing tourist resorts, bringing down power lines and shutting down coal mines, has become a huge rain depression.
No deaths were reported so far from the storm, but there are still fears that fatalities may emerge after emergency workers logged more than 100 flood rescues during the night. Gales and huge surf swells lashed the coast around Cape Byron.
“I suspect there may be people that may have perished overnight as a result of those conditions,” said NSW State Emergency Service Deputy Commissioner Mark Morrow told ABC.
Farmer Peter Hannigan, whose property is just north of Lismore, said the deluge was the worst he had seen in more than 50 years in the area. “I think a lot of people are going to have a lot of significant damage on the farms,” he told the ABC. “It is the worst I have ever seen I have to admit.”
Authorities have ordered almost 20,000 people to evacuate to higher ground across parts of southern Queensland and the neighbouring NSW, where thousands of schools also shut. At Murwillumbah, a NSW town of 8,000 people, weather forecasters said the major Tweed River was beyond its banks and running higher than ever previously recorded. “The water’s the highest I’ve ever seen it. Heaps of shops are closed and most places shut at midday yesterday and everyone went home while they still could,” Natasha Bolden said from the Murwillumbah Golf Club. “The south side is underwater.”
In the cyclone-hit zone further north in Queensland, holidaymakers evacuated resort islands along the world-famous Great Barrier Reef, where the storm was strongest.
The military has mobilised 1,300 soldiers to help assess the full extent of damage and aid the clean-up.
Helicopters and planes have been deployed to restore infrastructure and supply emergency food, water and fuel.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said some 2,000 properties had been assessed, with about 270 severely damaged.
“The army is doing everything it can to get water into those parts of North Queensland that I mentioned — Airlie, Proserpine, Bowen and the Whitsunday islands,” she told reporters.
“We also have structural engineers that are on the ground at the moment.”
Miners Glencore and BHP, said they were still assessing the precise extent of any disruption to coal shipments in the region.
Queensland’s top insurers, Suncorp Group Ltd and RACQ, said it was too early to put a dollar figure on the full amount of damage.