(Brisbane) Tens of thousands of Australians were asked to evacuate their homes on Monday in the face of torrential rains which caused record flooding and forced some residents to take refuge on their roofs.
Posted yesterday at 11:49 p.m.
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” to 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 flat.
She climbed to the roof with her partner, where they were spotted by kayakers, who waved at a makeshift rescue boat.
“We were saved by two people in a boat, two residents,” said Mme Hardiman, describing “horrifying” scenes at Lismore.
With the city’s levees having already caved in, 43,000 residents were 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 the state of 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 sinking rapidly.
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.
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 Australia’s coast.