The floods in Australia inflicted an incredible “incredible” devastation to the communities of northern Queensland, said the Prime Minister of the State, even if the conditions improve more quickly than expected.
Thousands of evacuated residents began to return home on Tuesday, but it is feared that hundreds of properties and businesses have been flooded. Two people died.
“It is a catastrophe that will test the determination of people,” said Queensland Prime Minister David Crisafulli, at the ABC.
Certain parts of the region have been beaten by almost 2 m (6.5 feet) of rain since Saturday, which caused warnings and flood failures – but the Prime Minister said that the weather conditions had been ” really nice “these last hours.
In Townsville, the inhabitants woke up on Tuesday with a gray sky and the drizzle, and the news that predicted the flood levels did not materialize. It was a striking contrast with the intense showers that beat the region in recent days.
“We believe that the danger has passed,” the president of the Townsville disaster management group, Andrew Robinson, told journalists.
Taking previous forecasts which had suggested that up to 2,000 houses in Townsville could have faced flood risks, Crisafulli said that “the city had dodged a bullet”.
Local resident Jo Berry told the BBC that she and her family were one of those who returned home on Tuesday, after spending a white night watching precipitation.
“People talk about the SSPT when it rains here and I understand perfectly,” explains Ms. Berry, formerly of Leicester in the United Kingdom.
“We have been in the house here for more than 20 years and we have gone through some cyclone events and the 2019 floods, so this is not our first rodeo,” she added, referring to a disaster of Flood which caused a $ 1.24 billion (£ 620 m; $ $) in damage.
BBC / Simon AtkinsonMonday evening, other Local residents told the BBC that they were “on a knife edge” As they were waiting to see if their houses would survive.
But further north in the state, power outages and damaged roads made it difficult to assess the extent of destruction in cities such as Ingham and Cardwell.
Crisafulli said that the first reports suggested that the damage was “frankly incredible” and that Ingham, which is almost entirely without electricity “, remains the biggest challenge”.
“There are people who have been flooded at home, in their businesses and on their farms,” he told journalists on Tuesday.
Images published in local media showed long lines at the city supermarket while people were waiting for critical supplies. Crisafulli said that in the middle of the power failure, the local hospital worked as usual and that a service station was open.
The floods damaged the houses, cultures and coastlines of the region, said local deputy Nick Dametto in a video published online.
“Flood is something that I have never seen before,” he said.
Hosting less than 5,000 people, Ingham is already in shock after a 63 -year -old woman died when a derivation of the Emergency Service (SSE) capsized during a rescue attempt on Sunday.
Ergon energyMore than 8,000 properties remain without electricity in northern Queensland, according to the state energy supplier, and The partial collapse of a critical highway Continue to hinder efforts to help some of the hardest affected areas.
Crisafulli said that the recovery effort “would take some time” and that priority in the coming hours would be to work with the army to bring power generators to isolated communities and “bring them back online”.
He added that federal funding would help rebuild the Bruce Batu highway – the main state route which extends over 1,673 km (1,039 miles) from the south.
Located under the tropics, northern Queensland is vulnerable to destructive cyclones, storms and floods.
Addressing the BBC in Townsville, Scott Heron, a local resident and expert in climate, said that the last disaster was not unexpected.
“For a long time, climatologists have been clear that extreme weather events will become more extreme, and we see it,” said Professor Heron, who works at James Cook University and is the president of UNESCO on climate vulnerability heritage.
Professor Heron urged politicians to consider this when they predicted restoration and reconstruction efforts, such as the Bruce highway.
It would be “waste public money” if infrastructure planning, in particular for long-term projects, including roads and bridges, has not “incorporated changing threats from climate change”, a- he said.
Additional report by Hannah Ritchie in Sydney.
