Thousands of Sydney residents were told to evacuate their homes on Monday, the third day of torrential rain. Flooding rivers have submerged swaths of land and torrents of water are pouring out of the Australian city’s main dam.
“We’ve seen the rivers rise quickly, much faster than expected,” state emergency services official Ashley Sullivan told national broadcaster ABC. Some 32,000 people have received an evacuation order or warning in New South Wales state, he said.
In some areas, the waters might exceed the levels reached during the deadly floods that have occurred on the east coast in the past two years, Sullivan said.
Rescue services said they had rescued around 20 people in the past 12 hours, most of them trapped in cars on flooded roads in New South Wales.
A dam overflows
On Monday morning, muddy brown river waters had turned a large swathe of land into a lake in the suburb of Camden, south-west of Sydney. Large volumes of water gushed from the pressurized Warragamba dam, which supplies the majority of the city with drinking water.
As the planet warms, the atmosphere contains more water vapour, increasing the chances of heavy rainfall events, scientists say. These rains, associated with other factors linked in particular to land development, promote flooding.
In March, floods devastated Western Sydney and claimed 20 lives.
Australia is particularly affected by climate change. It is regularly hit by droughts, devastating forest fires, not to mention repeated and increasingly intense floods.
/ATS