Sydney: Australia’s flood crisis shifted to the country’s far south on Sunday, with 13,000 homes swamped by a record deluge as the toll mounted in the reeling northeast amid scenes of devastation.
Dozens of towns braced for unprecedented river levels in Victoria state, where 13,000 homes were under water and 3,000 people had fled the rising waters, days after the flooding emergency peaked in northeastern Queensland.
Homes were swamped to waist height as waters swept through the southeast, levelling fences and trees and tearing up roads.
Devastated by the worst wildfires in Australia’s history just two years ago, parts of Victoria were now facing once-in-a-century flooding, with some towns having never experienced such inundation.
“It’s catastrophic, it’s a complete disaster, there’s no houses down the bottom of town really that aren’t under water,” said Charlton shopkeeper John Tormey.
“We’ve got the local supermarket…nearly wiped out completely and a lot of the old guys have just never seen anything like what it is at the moment,” he told ABC radio.
Flooding also swept through the island state of Tasmania, washing away bridges and forcing hundreds of evacuations.
It follows a six-week crisis in Queensland, where floodwaters swallowed an area the size of France and Germany combined, culminating in the swamping last week of Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, and utter devastation of towns to the west.
Experts have linked Australia’s downpours to an especially strong La Nina weather pattern bringing cooler water temperatures and exacerbating the traditional tropical cyclone season.
Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said that the death toll had climbed to 17 since January 10, with the discovery of a woman’s body in a house in the worst-hit Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, where a wall of water virtually razed towns.
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