Sydney officials urged thousands of residents to evacuate amid a "life-threatening emergency as heavy rains cause flooding on Monday that authorities warned could continue over the next 12 hours.
The weather phenomenon was a result of an intense low-pressure system off Australia's east coast that is forecast to bring more heavy rain through Monday across the southern regions of New South Wales. This comes as several areas in the state were already hit with about a month's rain over the weekend.
Sydney Heavy Floods
Officials estimate about 100 millimeters of rain could fall in the next 24 hours over a wide swathe of regions in New South Wales, from Newcastle to the south of Sydney, a distance of more than 300 kilometers, said the Bureau of Meteorology.
In a televised media briefing on Sunday evening, New South Wales emergency services minister Steph Cooke said that the recent situation is much more dangerous than anything experienced in 2021. He called it a rapidly evolving situation that could result in areas impacted when they have never experienced flooding, as per CNN.
Earlier in the day, the official urged people to reconsider traveling for the holidays due to rough weather having hit at the beginning of the school holidays. Over many areas, there were more than 200 millimeters of reported rainfall, with some experiencing up to 350 millimeters, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
In southwest Sydney, Camden was underwater and the weather bureau predicted that water levels in the area of North Richmond and Windsor northwest of Sydney would peak at higher levels than in the past three major flood events since March 2021.
According to the Associated Press, officials added that Warragamba Dam in western Sydney began overflowing overnight and the peak spill would be comparable to devastating flooding that was seen in March last year.
Rescue Operations
Despite authorities issuing evacuation recommendations to several suburbs in the region, Cooke said that residents should not need to wait to be told to leave. He noted that if they felt uncomfortable or unsure about their circumstances and they had an opportunity to leave earlier, they should do so without waiting for an evacuation order.
Emergency services also said that they conducted more than 100 flood rescues and responded to over 3,000 requests for assistance in the last 24 hours. Officials also opened evacuation centers in several areas in western Sydney.
There were about 100 Australian Defense Force personnel that helped by putting up sandbags and knocking on doors to warn of flood threats. The weather bureau's hazards preparation and response manager, Jane Golding, said that a coastal trough lingering since Friday deepened while an east coast low-pressure system formed off the Mid North Coast.
Cooke noted that the situation shows just how people are not necessarily heeding the advice that they continue to put out multiple times a day in relation to the flooding event. The official's warnings came as an unnamed man lost his life after falling out of a kayak on the Parramatta River in western Sydney, BBC reported.
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