Storm floods Australia and bushfires burn
Pastor Dale Morgan
Storm floods Australia and bushfires burn*
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia is living up to its iconic image as a
sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains, with a huge outback
storm causing flooding in three states on Saturday as drought-fuelled
bushfires continued burning.
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Monsoon rains over the country's vast interior have caused the usually
dry Todd River in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory to come to
life and flooded outback South Australia state and parts of Victoria and
New South Wales states.
The small rural town of Oodnadatta in South Australia was flooded and
most major roads leading to it closed to traffic by rising waters,
emergency service officials said.
Sister Joan Wilson at the Oodnadatta Hospital said medical supplies were
running low.
"If we don't get the supplies through in the next couple of days, some
people may be in a bit of pain," she told reporters.
The flooding prevented the Royal Flying Doctor service, the outback's
medical lifeline, from reaching the town.
Many remote cattle properties in South Australia were also cut off, but
farmers battling the worst drought in 100 years welcomed the rains.
"I am sure there will be a lot of pastoralists around here rubbing their
hands together with glee," said Trevor McLeod, a local government
officer in the opal mining centre of Coober Pedy, another flooded South
Australian town.
Cattle property owner Dean Rasheed said the rain was the heaviest to hit
South Australia's Flinders Ranges in living memory and would bring his
dry land back to life.
"I'm looking at the largest flood I've seen in my lifetime and I'm
getting on in years, so it's very significant," Rasheed told Australian
Associated Press news agency.
"The water is 200 metres wide and four metres deep."
As the outback storm moved east across Australia it caused flooding in
Victoria, which has been battling bushfires for more than 50 days, and
also the state of New South Wales.
Fires have struck five of Australia's six states since November,
blackening more than 1.2 million hectares (4,600 square miles) of
bushland, killing one and gutting dozens of homes.
MEGAFIRES
Some have been "megafires", created in part by global warming and a
drought which has provided an abundance of fuel, stretching thousands of
kilometres.
Rain in Victoria's north and east on Saturday eased bushfire threats,
but failed to douse the large fires, and left the Victorian towns of
Mildura and Stawell flooded, with rising waters inundating shops and
stranding motorists.
Weather forecaster Ward Rooney said he could not remember when Victoria
last reported such contrasting extreme weather conditions. "It's a large
bundle of warnings altogether, a combination you wouldn't see too
often," said Rooney.
Across the border in New South Wales, favourable weather conditions on
Saturday saved the alpine resort of Thredbo from a nearby bushfire, with
lower temperatures and rain from the outback storm expected on Sunday.
But in the far west of New South Wales, rain caused flooding in the
mining town of Broken Hill, forcing residents to sandbag homes to stop
water entering. Roads around the town were cut.
Australia's weather bureau said this month that the country appeared to
be suffering from an accelerated climate change brought about by global
warming.
While the heavily populated southeast experiences its worst drought for
a generation, the tropics and remote northwest are receiving
unseasonably heavy rains accounting for more than Australia's yearly
total average.