Flooding, evacuation orders for Victoria as water recedes in Tasmania, NSW
Despite a brief shower of rain, authorities fear more lives could be lost as thousands are at the mercy of unpredictable flooding in Victoria.
Victorian SES chief Tim Wiebusch has issued a specific warning to locals to be wary of ‘blue sky floods’, where clearing clouds lure people into a false sense of security that the risk is over if the water continues to rise rapidly. .
“One of the challenges is that we don’t have what we call blue sky flooding,” Mr. Wiebusch told ABC News.
“It’s stopped raining… I think it’s more obvious to people when it rains harder.”
Urgent evacuation orders are still being issued, but in some places it is too late to flee as swollen rivers burst their banks, flooding thousands of properties overnight, wiping out highways and cutting off power.
Mr Wiebusch urged people not to drive through floodwaters as rescue workers desperately try to reach stranded people.
“That only binds our emergency services that could support more vulnerable communities under pressure from these floods,” he said.
“So turn around, find an alternative way to get there. If you don’t have to travel in those northern parts of Victoria, don’t travel at all.’
We see road damage and flooding on the Midland Highway near Elmore in northern Victoria.
Desperate residents in Echuca, on the NSW-Victorian border, built a sandbag wall to try to keep the rising water at bay.
While the wall worked to keep residents safe on Saturday night, water began seeping through Sunday morning, moving closer and closer to residents’ homes.
More than 1,000 residents of Echuca and Echuca Village have been told to evacuate their homes and authorities are advising them to stay away for seven to 10 days.
Echuca Village is expected to be affected by the effects of the Goulburn and Murray rivers by mid-next week.
Authorities predicted that about 200 Echuca homes would be affected by flooding.
The Campaspe River is said to surpass 2011 flood levels at Echuca on Saturday.
Residents in the northern Victorian town of Echuca have mounted a desperate defense of their properties with sandbags
There have been more than 450 rescues since the floods started on Wednesday and 88 rescues in the past 24 hours.
On Saturday, a 71-year-old man was found drowned on his property in the northern Victorian city of Rochester, with police unable to reach him.
Greater Shepparton City Council said more than 7,950 properties in the northern Victorian borough have been flooded.
The Campaspe River has already overflowed in Axedale, with a Twitter video posted by Seven News reporter Paul Dowsley revealing that the raging waters nearly wiped out the McIvor Highway.
Evacuation alerts have been upgraded for Shepparton, Orrvale, Kialla West and Mooroopna to indicate that it is too late for residents to leave those areas.
The water overcame a storm surge at an electricity substation in Mooroopna, cutting off power to 6,000 properties.
Powercor confirmed that 5,954 homes west of Mooroopna, including the town of Tatura, had lost electricity.
The situation will continue for days.
The Midland Highway, also known as the Mooroopna Causeway, was set to be closed on Sunday, but authorities announced it would close between Mooroopna and Shepparton from 6.30pm on Saturday.
The Goulburn River is expected to peak at 40 feet (12 meters) near Shepparton on Tuesday, making the flooding the worst in decades in the area.
People remove mud from flood – damaged property in Maribyrnong suburb . in Melbourne
Loddon Mallee incident controller Mark Cattell said he wanted people to evacuate before it got dangerous.
“What we don’t want is the situation in Rochester where people were comfortable with what was happening, and they were comfortable staying there, despite us giving them a pretty bleak picture of where it was going to be,” he said. Mr Cattel.
“We’ve been evacuating people from Rochester by boats in the past two days in some very risky situations.”
Maribyrnong MP Bill Shorten said it was the worst the river has flooded in 50 years.
Hundreds of homes in Rochester were inundated by the flooded Campaspe River, one of dozens of waterways that overflowed and flooded northern Victorian towns
Twitter users shared images of the devastation that floods wrought in their wake
The Ovens River at Wangaratta has already reached 12.8 meters and could rise even further.
At Charlton, a major flood from the Avoca River is expected to hit the town for up to five days.
Asphalt roads were no match for the strength of flooding in northern Victoria
Victorian Prime Minister Dan Andrews said more than 340 roads across the state were out of order.
‘Main roads are assessed twice a day. Some urgent repair work has already started,” he said.
The Wangaratta warning applied to people living around the Parfitt Road levee system due to major flooding in the Ovens River.
More rain could hit the coast of NSW as people living in already saturated watersheds prepare for more water to flow into the flood-affected communities.
The Bureau of Meteorology said showers and storms could develop on the east coast on Sunday, although it is expected that inland areas where most of the recent rainfall has fallen will be spared another deluge.
Police confirmed that a man was found dead in the water in the backyard of a house in High Street, Rochester, at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Hundreds of homes in the central Victorian town were overwhelmed as of Friday (pictured, a car in Bendigo)
But another storm system was predicted to develop over central Australia on Tuesday, bringing widespread rain and thunderstorms to the eastern states by mid-next week.
Heavy downpours in Victoria would also hit towns along the Murray River from Wednesday, including in Moama.
“Major flooding is happening in multiple watersheds across the state, and some communities will move more toward relief and recovery as the water begins to recede,” said SES spokesman Jamie Devenish.
“A lot of those northern watersheds eventually flow into the Murray, so (for) the Murray River we’re probably going to have a prolonged flood for the next four to six weeks.”
Swollen rivers in Victoria are expected to cause flooding in the state for up to six weeks. Pictured, Beechworth Woolshed Falls near Wangaratta
The northern cities of Victoria were hardest hit, but the flooding also hit central Melbourne. Rescue workers use inflatable dinghy to rescue people from flooding in Maribyrnong
Major flooding from the Murrumbidgee River would not reach the town of Hay until late October, the agency said.
In parts of inland NSW, rain records are set in October, including Broken Hill in the far west of the state.
Mass cleanup and recovery efforts in the soggy states will be put on hold with 100mm of rain forecast in the coming days.
The weather bureau said rain and thunderstorms developing in South Australia and inland Queensland will bring “much more widespread” rain and “flooding again” to the south east from Wednesday.
Jonathan, Bureau of Meteorology’s chief forecaster, told the Daily Mail that Australia Tasmania, Victoria and NSW would only be given “a few days’ reprieve.”
He said a weather system that develops “will bring rain and thunderstorms into South Australia and inland Queensland from Tuesday, then spread to the rest of the east coast from Wednesday to Saturday.”
“This will be much more widespread,” he warned.
“So we’re going to see showers all the way from central northern Queensland to Tasmania and especially with this we’re going to see thunderstorms as well.
“So we expect widespread falls that could trigger re-flooding in some parts of the southeast and east.”
Mr How said the heaviest rainfall is forecast for southeastern Queensland and northern NSW.
He said the region will receive between 50 and 100mm of rain, although further south it is still vulnerable to heavy local rainfall likely accompanied by thunderstorms.