Waterlogged Sydney suffers 3 feet of rain, more flooding
SYDNEY — More than 30,000 residents of Sydney and its surrounds were told to evacuate or prepare to abandon their homes Monday as Australia’s largest city faces its fourth, and possibly worst, round of flooding in less than a year and a half.
Days of torrential rain caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a new flood emergency to parts of the city of 5 million people.
“The latest information we have is that there’s a very good chance that the flooding will be worse than any of the other three floods that those areas had in the last 18 months,” Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said.
The current flooding might affect areas that were spared during the previous floods in March last year, March this year and April, Watt added.
New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet said 32,000 people were affected by evacuation orders and warnings.
“You’d probably expect to see that number increase over the course of the week,” Perrottet said.
Emergency services made numerous flood rescues Sunday and early Monday and were getting hundreds more calls for help.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology manager, Jane Golding, said some areas between Newcastle, north of Sydney, and Wollongong, south of Sydney, had received more than 39 inches of rain in the previous 24 hours. Some received more than 59 inches.
Those totals are near the average annual rainfall for coastal areas of New South Wales.
“The system that has been generating this weather does show signs that it will ease tomorrow, but throughout today, expect more rain,” Golding said.
Rain was forecast across New South Wales’s coast, including Sydney, all week, she said.
The Bureau of Meteorology said up to 4.7 inches of rain could fall in Sydney on Monday.
The flooding danger was highest along the Hawkesbury River, in northwest
Sydney, and the Nepean River in Sydney’s west.
State Emergency Services Commissioner Carlene York said strong winds had toppled trees, damaging roofs and blocking roads.
Mayor Theresa Fedeli of the Camden municipality said repeated flooding was taking a toll on members of her riverside community southwest of Sydney, where homes and businesses were inundated by the Nepean River over Sunday night.
“It’s just devastating. They just keep on saying, ‘devastating, not again,’” Fedeli said.
“I just keep on saying ... ‘We’ve got to be strong, we will get through this.’ But you know deep down it’s really hitting home hard to a lot of people,” she added.
Perrottet said government and communities need to adapt to major flooding becoming more common across Australia’s most populous state.
“There’s no doubt these events are becoming more common. And governments need to adjust and make sure that we respond to the changing environment that we find ourselves in,” Perrottet said.