Sydney/Brisbane (dpa) – In eastern Australia, after the devastating rains of the past few days, large parts of the country are still under water.
Around 200,000 people have been asked to leave their homes and get to safety, Regional Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet said on Thursday. Evacuation warnings have been issued for hundreds of thousands of other residents.
“Citizens are waking up this morning to the picture that much of our state is under water,” Perrottet said, warning that “the situation here in our region is only going to get worse before it gets better.” The emergency services said they had been called to more than 3,000 operations within 24 hours, including in the metropolis of Sydney. Warnings of further torrential rain around Sydney were lifted by the meteorologists in the afternoon (local time).
It remains dangerous
The town of Lismore was particularly hard hit, with the worst flooding in its history. The clean-up work was underway here on Thursday. Numerous buildings, shops and roads have been destroyed. Mayor Steve Krieg also lost everything: his house and grocery store were devastated by the floodwaters. “There are broken hearts all over this town, like mine,” he said.
The situation will also remain dangerous in neighboring Queensland for at least 24 to 48 hours, said the region’s Prime Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk, adding: “These are unprecedented times. I have lived in Brisbane all my life and I have never experienced storms and floods like this.”
At least 13 people have died in the historic flooding so far, ten in Queensland and three in New South Wales. The extreme weather was triggered by a slow-moving low-pressure area. In some areas it had rained as much in a few days as it normally does in a whole year.
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