By Loren Elliott and Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian authorities issued new flood warnings and evacuation orders on Tuesday, as torrential rains again hit various parts of the country, sweeping houses, roads and livestock in the worst rain in more than half a century.
The national weather agency has published weather alerts in all but one continent’s states or territories, affecting about 10 million people in the country of 25 million people, in an area the size of Alaska.
“The rain and flood situation remains dynamic and extremely complex,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters.
No deaths have been reported, but thousands of people have been rescued by emergency services in the past few days. Authorities ordered around 22,000 people to prepare to flee their homes, potentially joining some 18,400 people who have already been evacuated.
Images shared on social media showed destroyed bridges, trapped animals and submerged houses in New South Wales, the most populous and most affected state.
A video showed a container truck hitting a bridge, causing structural damage, while another showed a car wiped off the road by a violent flood in neighboring Queensland.
Other photos captured swarms of spiders and snakes as the creatures tried to escape the waters of the flood.
In NSW, a fourth consecutive day of heavy rain is expected to combine with a coastal valley and increase the flood overnight on Tuesday, even as the main city of Sydney has a delay in the late afternoon.
Thousands of people living along the Hawkesbury River, a large canal some 60 km (37 miles) north of Sydney, have been warned to prepare to evacuate.
Dave Murray, a landscaper from North Richmond, in Hawkesbury, filmed with a camera mounted on his jetski’s head while rescuing his neighbor’s 10 cows, forcing them to swim about 300 meters in water five meters deep.
“I knew they could swim because I did it before, but I didn’t know they could swim that well,” said Murray by phone.
Emergency crews used inflatable rafts and even some surf boats, usually reserved for beach rescue, to reach the lost places, Reuters images showed.
Alicia Pitt was rescued along with her family from their vacation cabin on the Hawkesbury River.
“We have a place on the other side of the river and we just came to move our van to high ground and we were stuck on the other side of the river with the landslides, so we have been there for a few days,” Pitt told Reuters.
The Warragamba Dam, Sydney’s main water supply, started to overflow on Saturday and is expected to remain so for another week. The previous summer, amid droughts and forest fires, the same dam fell below half of its water intake, causing severe water restrictions.
LOGISTICS LAG
Authorities began to coordinate with supermarkets to send groceries to people who were unable to reach a store, said Federal Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud.
Supermarket chain Coles Group Ltd planned to deliver essential products to stores near Hawkesbury on Tuesday. Rival grocer Woolworths Group Ltd said it closed several stores due to concerns over staff safety and warned of delays in delivery as the trucks were redirected to avoid flooded roads.
Coal deliveries to the port of Newcastle, north of Sydney, the largest coal export port in the world, have been halted earlier because a flood closed the railways.
On Tuesday, the country’s largest independent coal miner, Whitehaven Coal Ltd, said it was forced to stop loading at the port due to structural failures, while the port’s weather restrictions were slowing ship movements.
The company said flooding on the roads could also prevent employees from going to work and reduce the forecast for coal sales to a range of 18.5 million to 19 million tonnes, from a range of 19 million to 20 million previously.
(Reporting by Jonathan Barrett, Renju Jose, Byron Kaye and Loren Elliott in Sydney; Editing by Richard Chang and Jane Wardell)