Deadly storms batter eastern Australia
Violent storms have torn across Australia’s east coast, sweeping one man to his death, blowing roofs off houses and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of buildings.
Yesterday’s weather dumped golf ball-sized hail and torrential rain, causing flash flooding and knocking out power to more than 230,000 homes and businesses along a 112-mile stretch of south-east Queensland state coastline.
More than 58,000 people still had no electricity today.
“It looks like there’s been a bomb, a great big bomb gone off in all the streets. It’s just terrible,” Brisbane city resident Davina Thomas said. “My daughter’s had her roof blown off. It’s in the pool.”
More than two inches of rain soaked the region, with winds gusting at up to 80 miles an hour, the Bureau of Meteorology reported.
“The only thing that has been anything like it is Cyclone Larry,” said Queensland state premier Anna Bligh, referring to the category 5 storm that battered Queensland with 180 mph winds two years ago, devastating farming towns and flattening banana and sugar cane plantations.
A 20-year-old man and his 23-year-old friend who had climbed into a storm drain in Brisbane to photograph the storm were sucked downwards when the water suddenly rose. Rescuers were able to yank the older man to safety, but the 20-year-old disappeared in the raging waters. His body was found hours later.
The state emergency services department reported it received more than 15,000 calls between yesterday evening and this morning, mainly from people whose roofs were damaged by trees or strong winds.
In the outback town of Alice Springs, hundreds of tourists were stranded in a separate weekend storm after some areas saw up to four inches of rain, which flooded several main roads.
