Some 18,000 people have been evacuated from severe floods across New South Wales (NSW) in Australia, with more heavy rainfall predicted.
The state’s entire coast is now under a severe weather warning.
Days of torrential downpours have caused rivers and dams to overflow around Sydney – the state capital – and in south-east Queensland.
PM Scott Morrison has offered funds for those forced to evacuate, in what has been called a “one-in-50-years event”.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has updated its severe weather warning, saying that Tuesday could see “increased rainfall, strong winds, damaging surf and abnormally high tides” in New South Wales.
It also said that some 10 million people across every state and territory except Western Australia were now under a weather warning.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said no deaths had been reported by late Monday – describing it as “a miracle given what we have been through”.
But there has been widespread damage in the affected areas, which are home to about a third of Australia’s 25 million people.
In pictures: Australia’s ‘one-in-a-50-year’ flood
Ms Berejiklian said many of the communities “being battered by the floods” had been affected by bushfires and drought the previous summer.
“I don’t know any time in state history where we have had these extreme weather conditions in such quick succession in the middle of a pandemic,” she said.
More than 15 areas in NSW, mostly low-lying have been put under evacuation orders and a similar number are under evacuation warnings.
Areas north and west of Sydney, the NSW Central Coast and the Hawkesbury valley were of particular concern.
There have been some 15,000 evacuations from the Mid-North Coast and a further 3,000 in Sydney, officials said.
Swollen rivers cut off roads and bridges and forced about 150 schools to shut on Monday.
Emergency services have conducted at least 750 rescues, including winching people from cars. One stranded family was lifted from their flooded home by a helicopter.
Responders also saved a family with a baby from flooding in their home in Sydney’s west.
There have been images of dead wildlife, livestock floating through flooded areas and rows of houses engulfed up to their windows.
The Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers – which border Sydney to the north and west – reached higher levels on Monday than during a devastating flood in 1961.
In addition, the Warragamba Dam, Sydney’s main water source, began spilling over for the first time in five years. It reached a peak daily discharge on Sunday of 500 gigalitres – equivalent to the volume of Sydney Harbour – before falling back to 300 GL on Monday.
On Sunday a young couple saw their house north of Sydney swept away by flash floods on what should have been their wedding day. Shocked neighbours filmed the uprooted three-bedroom cottage bobbing along the Manning river after it burst its banks.
In Port Macquarie’s North Shore, one resident was filmed dragging a stingray through what was his front lawn.
In south-east Queensland, flash floods also affected Brisbane and the Gold Coast at the weekend.
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