Ten dead due to severe weather in Australia
Storms and thunderstorms have caused devastation in eastern Australia. At least ten people have been killed in the states of Queensland and Victoria. In the west, on the other hand, there is severe drought and bushfires.
According to authorities, severe storms in the Australian states of Queensland and Victoria have claimed the lives of at least ten people.
According to the police, the bodies of three men were recently recovered, whose boat had capsized off Brisbane the day before. The boat had a total of eleven people on board. The eight survivors were taken to hospitals, and their condition is considered stable.
In Brisbane, the body of a nine-year-old girl was also discovered on Tuesday, hours after she had disappeared in a flooded stormwater drain. On Monday evening, a 59-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree in the nearby city of Gold Coast. In the town of Gympie, also in Queensland, rescue workers found the bodies of a 40-year-old and a 46-year-old woman in the Mary River.
Tens of thousands of homes without power
Severe storms also occurred in Victoria in southeastern Australia. A man and a woman at a campground in Buchanan were killed by flash flooding. On the same day, a 44-year-old man in Caringal was killed by a falling branch on his property.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles said that there had never been storms of this intensity in the region before. The damages are estimated to be in the billions. Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll also referred to “24 tragic hours due to the weather.”
Australian media reported that hundreds of buildings had been damaged by storms, flooding, or hail. Power outages have also occurred in wide areas of Queensland. Currently, up to 90,000 households are still without power.
Storms in the east, fires in the west
While severe storms cause damage in eastern Australia, the west of the continent is suffering from drought and bushfires. Australia is particularly affected by climate change. A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from February 2022 suggests that the country will be increasingly affected by devastating natural events in the future.