In Australia, floods that have hit the east coast for a week have killed 20 people, authorities announced on Tuesday, after the bodies of a woman and a man were discovered in Sydney. Tens of thousands of people must evacuate the city of 5 million people, in prospect of new heavy rains and flash floods.
The next 48 hours will be “difficult”, warned the meteorological services. Some 60,000 residents of Australia’s largest city were asked to leave their homes on Tuesday.
A dam overflows, the roof of a supermarket collapses
The torrential rains that battered Sydney submerged bridges, flooded homes, swept away cars and the roof of a supermarket collapsed. The Manly dam, in the north of the city, began to overflow on Tuesday and 2,000 residents were asked to evacuate.
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In the suburb of Georges Hall, located on the edge of a river, vehicles were half submerged and the police had to rescue people trapped in their cars by the sudden rise in water. Rescue services were stretched to the limit on Tuesday as torrential rains and violent storms continued to sweep through the state of New South Wales for the second week in a row.
The aquatic equivalent of the devastating fires of 2019 and 2020
Flood alerts have been issued along all of the state’s 2,000 kilometers of coastline. These floods are “the aquatic equivalent of the unprecedented forest fires” that ravaged Australia for months in 2019 and 2020, Phil Campbell, spokesman for the relief services, told AFP.
The violent weather, which began last week, caused damage to property and wildlife similar to that caused by these fires, he added. “They have the same consequences for the population: closed roads, damaged infrastructure and power cuts,” he said.
In the past 24 hours, rescuers have received around 100 calls for help and this figure was expected to rise on Tuesday.
Unheard of in 60 years
In northern Sydney, researchers were evacuated from their lab when water from the nearby Manly Dam began to pour out in the rain, unheard of “in 60 years of existence of the laboratory”, according to a researcher.
In the Northern Rivers region, 800 people are housed in emergency structures, said Charlene York, commissioner in the state emergency services. Nearly half of the 5,000 homes devastated by flooding following the disaster are now uninhabitable. Mullumbimby, a city located south of Brisbane, has been cut off from the rest of the world for several days, without telephone, internet or any outside help, resident Casey Whelan told AFP. “Many people in my street cannot be compensated by insurance (…) they will have no means of rebuilding,” he lamented.
Australia has been hit hard in recent years by climate change: droughts, deadly bushfires and floods are becoming more frequent and intense.
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