Two more people died in severe storms and floods in south-east Australia. On Saturday, a 29-year-old man was struck by lightning in Eba, about 130 kilometers north-east of the city of Adelaide, the South Australian state police said.
A dead man was also found on the east coast of neighboring New South Wales on Saturday, the Australian news agency AAP reported, citing the police. It is assumed that the approximately 30-year-old man drowned near the city of Ballina. At least four people have died in connection with the floods in the past week.
Danger not over yet
In Echuca, on the border between the states of New South Wales and southern neighboring state Victoria, the Murray River topped record levels set in 1993 on Saturday night, AAP further reported. Evacuation instructions were in place. “If you live, work or vacation in this area, you should get to safety immediately,” Victoria’s Emergency Services issued a warning. The level of the Murray could rise even further on Monday night.
At the start of the week, more storms and flash floods are expected in south-eastern Australia, according to the weather service. “The next 48 hours will be dangerous,” Steph Cooke, the New South Wales regional minister for emergency services, wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Bad normality?
Australia’s east coast has been hit by exceptionally heavy rain and flooding on several occasions this year. At the beginning of July, areas in the metropolis of Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, were flooded. In March, too, there were severe floods around the metropolis and in large parts of the state as well as in Queensland.
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from February 2022 assumes that the country will be hit by devastating natural events even more frequently in the future. Stronger heat, more dangerous fires, more droughts and floods, higher sea levels and drier winters are to be expected.
