A second woman is confirmed to have died in flooding which has inflicted “incredible” devastation on communities in northern Australia.
Police said the 82-year-old woman’s body was found in a cane paddock in Queensland on Tuesday, two days after a 63-year-old woman died when a dinghy she was in overturned during a rescue attempt.
The region has been inundated since Saturday, with parts of northern Queensland seeing nearly 2m (6.5 ft) of rain.
By Tuesday, conditions were starting to ease – although Queensland Premier David Crisafulli warned it was still “a disaster that’s going to test the resolve of people” during an interview with broadcaster ABC.
He described the devastation as “incredible”, but noted weather conditions had been “really kind” in recent hours. Thousands had begun to return to their homes.
In Townsville, locals woke on Tuesday to grey skies and drizzle, and the news that predicted flooding levels had not materialised there. It was a stark contrast to the intense downpours which have battered the region over the past few days.
“We believe that the danger has passed,” Townsville Local Disaster Management Group chair Andrew Robinson told reporters.
Pointing to earlier forecasts which had suggested up to 2,000 Townsville homes could have faced flood risks, Crisafulli said that “the city had dodged a bullet”.
Local resident Jo Berry told the BBC she and her family were among those returning home on Tuesday, after spending a sleepless night monitoring the rainfall.
“People talk about PTSD when it rains here and I totally understand,” says Ms Berry, formerly from Leicester in the UK.
“We’ve been in the house here for over 20 years, and have been through a few cyclone events and the 2019 flooding so it is not our first rodeo,” she adds, referring to a flooding disaster which caused A$1.24bn (£620m; $770m) in damage.
BBC/Simon AtkinsonOn Monday night, other local residents told the BBC they were “on a knife edge” as they waited to see whether their houses would survive.
But further north in the state, power outages and damaged roads have made it difficult to assess the full extent of the destruction in towns such as Ingham and Cardwell.
Crisafulli said early reports suggested the damage was “quite frankly incredible” and that Ingham, which is almost entirely without electricity, “remains the biggest challenge”.
“There are people who have been inundated at home, in their businesses and in their farms,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Footage published in local media showed long lines at the town’s supermarket as people waited for critical supplies. Crisafulli said that amid the blackout the local hospital was operating as normal, and a petrol station was open.
The flooding has caused damage to the area’s homes, crops and coastline, local MP Nick Dametto said in a video posted online.
“The inundation is something that I have never seen before,” he said.
Home to fewer than 5,000 people, Ingham was already reeling after the 63-year-old woman died when a State Emergency Service (SES) dinghy capsized during a rescue attempt on Sunday.
The second woman’s body was found on Tuesday just north of Ingham after a neighbour raised the alarm. She was last seen on Monday night in a house, Queensland Police said in a statement.
Ergon EnergyMore than 8,000 properties remain without power across northern Queensland, according to the state’s energy provider, and the partial collapse of a critical highway continues to hinder efforts to assist some of the hardest-hit areas.
Crisafulli said the recovery effort would “take some time” and that the priority in the coming hours would be to work with the army to get power generators to isolated communities and “bring them back online”.
He added that federal funding would help reconstruct the battered Bruce Highway – the state’s main thoroughfare which stretches 1,673km (1,039 miles) from the south.
Located in the tropics, northern Queensland is vulnerable to destructive cyclones, storms, and flooding.
Speaking to the BBC in Townsville, Scott Heron, a local resident and climate expert, said the latest disaster was not unexpected.
“For a long time, climate scientists have been clear that extreme weather events will become more extreme, and we are seeing that,” said Prof Heron , who works at James Cook University and is the Unesco Chair on Climate Vulnerability of Heritage.
Prof Heron urged politicians to consider this as they planned recovery and rebuilding efforts, such as to the Bruce Highway.
It would be “wasting public money” if infrastructure planning, particularly for long-term projects including roads and bridges, did not “incorporate changing threats due to climate change”, he said.
Additional reporting by Hannah Ritchie in Sydney.
