Hundreds evacuated as flood disaster unfolds in northeastern Australia

CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA: Stranded residents sheltered on a hospital roof as flash floods swamped northeastern Australia on Monday, with raging waters severing roads and flushing crocodiles into towns.

Rescue teams evacuated more than 300 people overnight, police said, and military helicopters were dispatched to help inundated areas cut off by the floods.

Damage was reported along an expanse of coastline that stretched about 400 kilometres (250 miles) across northern Queensland.

With another deluge expected Monday, Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick said the unfolding disaster would have a “billion-dollar impact” on the state.

Nine people, including a seven-year-old patient, huddled for safety overnight on the roof of a hospital in the largely Aboriginal settlement of Wujal Wujal.

“We know that those people are in a desperate way now,” said Kiley Hanslow, the chief executive of the Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire Council.

Police said the group eventually clambered to a safer location before flood waters rose again on Monday afternoon.

Surrounded by a mountainous hinterland of tropical rainforest, hard-to-reach Wujal Wujal is one
of the most disadvantaged regions in Australia.

Hanslow told national broadcaster ABC the town centre was a “sea of dirty water and mud.”

“There’s also crocodiles swimming around in that water now,” she added.

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said flood waters would likely wash “crocs and all sorts of other things” into residential areas.”You would recall from past events we’ve had sharks, crocs, you name it,” she told reporters.

Wildlife officers in the rural town of Ingham used a lasso to catch a crocodile that had been bathing in shallow water next to houses.

-AFP