Deadly storms hit Australian city 'like a quake'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sunday June 10, 2:08 PM
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Deadly storms hit Australian city 'like a quake'
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Rescue workers evacuated hundreds of people from their homes as deadly
storms lashed Australia's east coast Sunday, leaving parts of one city
looking like an earthquake had struck, officials said.
The death toll rose to eight when police found the body of a man who
died when his car was swept off a highway into a swollen creek.
His wife and their three young children, aged two, three and nine, and
who were travelling with him, also died when the road collapsed
underneath them, but their bodies had been found earlier.
Eight people have died so far since the storms hit Sydney and the
Central Coast and Newcastle to the north on Friday.
They include a 29-year-old man who was crushed when a tree fell on his
car near Newcastle and a couple perished when their vehicle was swept
off a bridge while crossing a flooded river in the Hunter Valley.
Another man from Newcastle is missing after being swept down a
stormwater drain.
Officials said Newcastle looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake.
"What I saw were parts of Newcastle that resembled the kind of damage
that followed the (1989) earthquake," New South Wales state premier
Morris Iemma said after visiting the city.
"Construction sites and scaffolding, debris on roads, abandoned cars,
homes that were damaged, trees having fallen on homes, extensive damage.
It was quite disbelieving," he added.
The 1989 earthquake packed a magnitude of 5.6 and killed 13 people.
Newcastle resident Harry Gregory told The Sunday Telegraph he fled his
home after his bed and fridge started to float in the floodwaters.
"Everything's ruined," he said. "I have a lounge (sofa) stuck in my
front fence and I have got no idea who it belongs to."
Emergency workers evacuated 400 people from their homes along the
Central Coast overnight, including by boat and helicopter, and were
Sunday working on convincing residents in Maitland, just to the north,
to seek shelter in case the Hunter River bursts its banks.
Although it has brought much-needed rain to Sydney and towns to its
north, the storm has wreaked havoc.
Accompanied by gale force winds, it has driven a massive freighter
aground in Newcastle, prompted the suspension of ferry services on
Sydney Harbour and blacked out tens of thousands of homes.
State Emergency Services (SES) spokesman Philip Campbell said 200
properties in the Maitland region were being evacuated.
"The most serious point for the SES in terms of this flood emergency
will be later on this evening," he told Australian Associated Press.
Prime Minister John Howard said those affected by storm and flooding
would be entitled to cash payments in addition to natural disaster
funding offered by the state government.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the communities who have suffered and
are continuing to feel the impact of this natural disaster," he said.
Maritime officials said the 30,000-tonne vessel Pasha Bulker, still
stranded on a Newcastle beach after running aground amid huge seas on
Friday, had had some power restored to it and appeared to be intact.
Meanwhile, power outages on the Central Coast were threatening the water
supply because a black-out at two pumping stations meant that reservoirs
were only 10 percent full.
"We're anticipating if we don't get power back today that we may lose
water to some suburbs by this evening," Gosford City Council's Stephen
Martin said.