Flash Floods Force Evacuations in Southeast Australia (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Thousands of people across three states in Australia were asked to evacuate their homes on Friday after two days of unrelenting rain triggered flash floods in the south-east of the country.
Local authorities expect the situation to only get grimmer in the upcoming days.
The flooding has been worst in the state of Victoria so far, with southern parts of New South Wales and northern parts of the island state of Tasmania also witnessing incessant rain. Some regions have taken more than a month's worth of rain since Wednesday, according to officials, Deutsche Welle reported.
"[This] has led to widespread, major flooding... with some rivers experiencing record flooding and this is only going to continue to move downstream and get worse," Dean Narramore of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology told ABC television.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the federal government stood ready to provide assistance to the flood-knit states. "There are already ADF (Australian Defense Force) personnel on the ground in Victoria... this is a difficult time, my heart goes out to those communities affected at this time," local media quoted him as saying.
Images on social media showed people wading through knee-deep water with their pets while others were being rescued on boats. Meanwhile, the ground floor of a pub on the banks of Melbourne's Maribyrnong river was almost completely underwater on Friday morning.
This is not the first crisis in Australia this year. Severe storms along the country's east coast led to flooding in March this year, which devastated parts of Queensland and New South Wales and claimed over 20 lives. In July, tens of thousands of residents in Sydney were asked to evacuate due to floods.
Weather experts attribute these to a multi-year La Nina — a weather phenomenon which brings more rain.
