Cities submerged, at least 10 dead in ‘unprecented’ Australian floods

Storms began at the Queensland town of Gympie on Feb. 22. They drenched coastal towns on the way to the city of Brisbane, which received 80 percent of its typical annual rainfall in three days.

The nation has been living under a La Niña weather pattern since November which is predicted to ease over the coming months. La Niña ushered in a wetter, cooler summer Down Under. The same pattern, which originates with cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean, causes a cool, wet winter in the northern United States and a warmer, drier one in the south.

In a climate outlook released Tuesday, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said the country continued to be impacted by climate change, including increased rainfall during the wet season between October and April, and a “greater proportion of rainfall from high-intensity short-duration rainfall events.”

Kelley Sheenan, editor in chief of independent magazine Peppermint, watched social media helplessly at home with her covid-positive son as water encroached on the magazine’s Brisbane office. She rushed to the office alone in the middle of the night to carry computers one-by-one through ankle-deep water into her car.

“I could feel the water getting higher on my legs each time, so I knew I had to stop as it was getting too scary,” she said.

“From what I can see the water is almost at the roof, so I don’t think anything will be salvageable. It doesn’t seem real.”

As the flooding moved to her home, she said she was told she shouldn’t to go to an evacuation center because her son had covid and to ring around to hospitals. She instead moved everything to the second story and waited it out, hoping for the best, until water levels receded.

In typical Aussie fashion, some residents took advantage of the conditions for unusual sports. A Sunshine Coast bicycle rider was seen tearing through the floodwaters towing a child on a surfboard, and a swimmer was filmed completing a freestyle lap on a football oval. Elsewhere, world champion surfer Mick Fanning gave a pharmacist a lift on a Jet Ski between two towns so she could distribute medication.

On Monday the severe weather hit the city of Lismore in New South Wales where it turned downtown blocks into swimming pools.

Harrison Eyre, 20, a student, was one of many residents who took to flooded streets in “tinnies” — small aluminum boats — to assist. He said he helped perform about 20 rescues on Monday, including navigating the boat between cabins at a holiday park to reach an older woman waiting on top of a permanent trailer. He climbed onto a roof to save a Dachshund dog and watched helicopters pull people from rooftops using winches, he said.

“At some places, the water was over the top of roofs of double-story houses,” he said. “The State Emergency Service put a call out to all people with boats in the area to do what they could — get in the water and try and find people.”

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Tuesday the disaster was an “unprecedented event” beyond the scale of previous floods.

Dan Clark, 36, a Little League coach, was reeling knowing the Lismore baseball field was under several feet of water after expensive renovations had only just been completed. He said he spent Monday “holding my breath and waiting by the phone” for news of friends and family waiting on their roofs.

He has lived in the region, prone to flooding, all his life. He said previous events were “not even close” to the record-breaking water levels he saw on Monday.

The meteorology bureau warned Tuesday that the same region of Queensland was likely to be hit by severe thunderstorms with large hailstones, damaging winds and more heavy rainfall in the second half of the week. In New South Wales it predicted the rainstorm would continue south with flash-flooding possible in Sydney, coastal regions, and as far as Victoria — the southernmost state on the east coast.