Tens of thousands of Australians were told to evacuate their homes on Monday as torrential rains caused record flooding and forced some residents to take shelter on their roofs.
The death toll stood at eight on Monday and the Australian Meteorological Agency warned that further powerful thunderstorms and intense rain would bring “life-threatening flash floods“in much of the central Pacific coastal region.
In the rural town of Lismore, Danika Hardiman woke up Monday morning to find the mud-colored waters had reached the balcony on the second floor of her apartment. She climbed to the roof with her partner, where they were spotted by kayakers, who waved to a makeshift lifeboat. “We were saved by two people in a boat, two local residents“, explained Ms Hardiman to AFP, describing “horrible” scenes in Lismore.
With the city’s dikes having already caved in, 43,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate immediately. Faced with the saturation of the emergency services crumbling under calls, some residents, including the mayor of Lismore Steve Krieg, turned to social networks to ask for help. “If anyone has a boat and can get to Engine Street, there’s a pregnant woman sitting on her roof. Help, please“, he wrote on Facebook.
The emergency services announced that they had deployed a helicopter to recover other people from their roof. The water level in Lismore has yet to reach the expected level of 14 metres, but it is already the worst flooding in the town’s history.
Millions of people have been ordered to stay at home and nearly 1,000 schools have been closed across Queensland. A 70-year-old man was rescued by bystanders after the boat he lives in was swept away by the Brisbane River before crashing into a ferry pier and rapidly sinking.
Passersby held each other by the arm, one of them told ABC, to create a human chain and fish the man out of the river. The rain began to ease in Brisbane on Monday, but authorities expect the severe weather to continue this week as the “rain bomb” continues to move south along the Australian coast.
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