CANBERRA: Bushfire-ravaged Australia has been pummelled by dangerous weather conditions, including heavy rainfall and floods in the east and a severe tropical cyclone in the west.
Tropical Cyclone Damien hit Western Australia’s northern coastal Dampier-Karathha region on Saturday with a category three storm, bringing “very destructive winds” and gusts of 205 kilometres per hour, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Experts had expected the cyclone to reach category four, but it did not do so. It will weaken as it moves inland, the bureau said.
The cyclone brought “very heavy rainfall” and destructive gale-force winds.
The weather bureau warned residents in several coastal towns about dangerously high storm tides, with damaging waves and serious flooding. It also said the heavy rain is likely to cause flooding in the Pilbara and Gascoyne mining regions.
The damage in the remote region is not yet known. A “red alert” lock down was in place for several towns, meaning people must urgently seek shelter. State authorities said they will assess the region on Sunday morning.
“There are a lot of branches and leaves flying about the place,” Peter Long, Karratha’s mayor, told Australian broadcaster ABC on Saturday.
At the same time, in Katanning, in southwestern Australia, an out-of-control bushfire is threatening lives and homes, according to the state fire agency, which issued an emergency warning — the highest alert level — on Saturday evening.
In the eastern states of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland, where bushfires have wreaked havoc since September, severe weather conditions are causing damaging winds, heavy rain, abnormally high tides and floods.
The two states have suffered severe drought for the past two years.
The weather bureau said some of the areas in NSW saw up to 300 millimetres of downpour over a 48-hour-period, with 150 mm of rain in Sydney since Thursday.
“Potentially we haven’t seen anything like this since the late 1990s,” the bureau’s acting state manager Jane Golding said, adding the rain was expected to intensify overnight and through Sunday.
State Emergency Services (SES) issued a warning about flash floods in some areas, as well as destructive winds reaching up to 90 kilometres per hour.
On Saturday, SES said that it had received more than 2,600 calls for help since midnight on Wednesday, and had carried out at least 20 flood rescues, most involving cars stuck in high water.
A video of a man riding his jet ski past a McDonald’s on a flooded street on the Central Coast was posted online and is now being investigated by the police.
NSW Minister David Elliott called the driver a “boof head.” About 38 bushfires continue to burn throughout NSW, where the state Rural Fire Service (RFS) has turned its focus to helping in flood-related emergencies.
“We have seen significant rain across parts of NSW. We need a bit more in the south and south-east of the state, where we still have fires burning,” RFS spokesman Greg Allan said. — dpa
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