Gusts and torrential rain have blacked out more than a quarter of a million properties and swamped parts of Australia’s east coast, officials said Sunday, with one driver confirmed dead and a dozen troops injured in the wild weather.
After days hovering off the coast as a category 2 tropical cyclone and battering a 400-kilometre (250-mile) stretch of coastline, Alfred weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall on Saturday evening.
But as the remnants of the cyclone moved inland, hundreds of thousands of people remained without power on Sunday, and video images showed knee-high water pouring through roads in some of the worst-hit areas of southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales.
A total of 23 centimetres (nine inches) of rain had descended on the Queensland resort of Hervey Bay in just a few hours, flooding homes and forcing emergency rescues in rapid waters, the state’s premier, David Crisafulli, told a news conference.
The weather system “continues to pack a punch” as it moves inland, Crisafulli said, adding that more than 1,000 schools shuttered across the state would gradually start reopening on Monday.
Utility companies said about 268,000 homes and businesses in southeast Queensland and another 12,500 in northeast New South Wales were still without power on Sunday afternoon.
“Customers need to be prepared to be without power for several days,” Queensland’s Essential Energy said.
“The biggest challenges to getting power back on will be rising flood waters and swollen creek beds, fallen vegetation and mud slides impacting access roads,” it said in a statement.
About 14,600 people are under emergency warnings related to the weather system in New South Wales, the state’s emergency services said.
“In the last 24 hours, 17 incidents have occurred as a result of people driving into flood waters,” said emergency services deputy commissioner Damien Johnson.
“Not only is it a danger to yourself and your family, it is also dangerous as well for the volunteers, the emergency services workers that need to rescue you.”
A 61-year-old man’s body was found Saturday, a day after his four-wheel-drive pickup truck was swept off a bridge into a river in northern New South Wales.
He had escaped from the pickup and tried in vain to cling to a tree branch in the river before disappearing into the rapid waters, police said.
Perilous weather
In a separate incident Saturday, police said 13 soldiers were injured and taken to hospital when two army trucks rolled over during a deployment to clear roads near the flood-prone New South Wales city of Lismore.
Twelve soldiers were still in hospital Sunday, two of them in a serious condition, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told a news conference.
“We wish a speedy recovery for all of those young soldiers,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned that the weather was still perilous.
“The situation in Queensland and northern New South Wales remains very serious due to flash flooding and heavy winds,” Albanese said.
“Heavy rainfall, damaging wind gusts and coastal surf impacts are expected to continue over coming days.”
Severe weather warnings were in force for a broad area of southeast Queensland, the government’s bureau of meteorology said.
“Heavy rainfall and significant flooding continue to impact southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales, driven by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred,” it said in an update.
“The ex-Tropical Cyclone is gradually moving inland, but continues to draw significant tropical moisture into the region.”
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