Authorities have warned townspeople in Australia's southeast to leave their homes with three days of supplies as a surging river threatens their community in a flooding crisis that has devastated the country's mining industry.
Up to 1,500 homes in Kerang, in the north of Victoria state, could be affected if the Lodden River rises any further. The flooding in Victoria follows weeks of massive flooding in northeastern Queensland, which swamped two-thirds of the giant state, paralysed several mines and left 30 people dead.
One of the victims, a 13-year-old boy, was buried alongside his mother today after becoming a national hero for insisting that rescuers first save his younger brother when their family car was submerged.
Walls of water are surging across northern and western Victoria in the wake of record rainfall last week. Floodwaters have already left 1,000 households in Victoria's northwest without power, and thousands more homes are under threat of cuts as substations and low-lying power lines are submerged.
Energy supplier Powercor built earthen barriers around the substation in Kerang, in a floodplain expected to be inundated by 2m of water.
Across Victoria state, more than 3,500 people have evacuated their homes, with 51 towns and 1,500 properties already affected by rising waters.
The victims in the Queensland flooding were mostly killed during a flash flood last week that hit towns west of the state capital, Brisbane.
Jordan Rice (13) had insisted rescuers save his younger brother Blake first, when the family's car became swamped. Blake was plucked to safety, while Jordan and his mother were swept to their deaths.
"The fire of my heart will continue to burn until it's my time to join them," Jordan's father, John Tyson, told more than 350 mourners who attended a funeral service in the flood-ravaged city of Toowoomba.
The government has said the Queensland floods could be the country's most expensive natural disaster ever, but has not yet released estimates of the costs. Some estimates already were at Aus$5 billion (€3.7 billion) before muddy brown waters swamped Brisbane last week.
Twenty of Queensland's coal mines were given special permits today to pump floodwater from their sites and another 18 applications were under consideration, said Mike Birchley, the acting assistant director general of Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management.
Mr Birchley said the permits carry conditions aimed at minimizing environmental damage from the extra water flows into surrounding creeks and rivers. "The last thing the people of Queensland need while they are still experiencing elevated water levels in their communities is further risks to their local waterways," Mr Birchley said in a statement.
Many of the state's 57 coal mines were working around the clock to remove floodwater and secure access to rail transport after tracks and bridges were washed away, said Michael Roche, chief executive of the state miners' association Queensland Resources Council.
Reuters