Sunday 17 December 2023

Queensland floods live updates: defence force on standby, PM says, as evacuations and rescues continue amid intense rain

Intense rain and flooding from ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper continues as rescue crew are deployed to Cairns. Follow the latest updates live

Cairns mayor Terry James said at the last count, there were 79 people, five dogs and two cats in a nearby evacuation centre.

Douglas Shire mayor Michael Kerr said he hasn’t seen “anything like this before” when it comes to the extreme weather.

I mean, the 2019 one was a massive village all at once… for it to just stall, stop and sit directly above us and drop the amount of rain that it has is very unusual.

It’s something I don’t think we were prepared for and the fact that the amount of rain that came from and the system we weren’t even anticipating that would be the case.

It’s widespread, there is absolutely water everywhere… I don’t think there’s a road that hasn’t been covered or damaged.

This is something that we haven’t seen for decades.

And because we’re so isolated, we just can’t get people from Cairns up here either.

Then the recovery side of this, once this water does disappear, it’s gonna be massive. There’s infrastructure damage galore, so this is going to be a long-term repair job for us.

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/SI48Vuv

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