- At least 18 evacuation orders in effect for western Sydney.
- Emergency services called out more than 1,400 times in 24 hours.
- Australia has been at the sharp end of climate change with droughts, bleaching and floods becoming more common and intense as global weather patterns change.
Thousands of Australians were ordered to evacuate their homes in Sydney on Sunday as torrential rain and flood inundated the city’s outskirts.
Roads were closed throughout the city, and authorities said at least 18 evacuation orders were in effect in western Sydney, which was inundated with severe flooding in March.
“This is a life-threatening emergency situation,” Stephanie Cooke, emergency services minister for the state of New South Wales, told reporters.
Australia has been at the sharp end of climate change, with droughts, deadly bushfires, bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef and floods becoming more common and intense as global weather patterns change.
With more wild weather expected in the coming days, Cooke described the floods as a “rapidly evolving situation” and warned that people should be “prepared to evacuate at short notice”.
The city’s Warragamba Dam began to spill in the early hours of Sunday morning, she said, well ahead of authorities’ predictions.
While in Camden, a southwestern suburb of Sydney home to more than 100,000 people, local shops and a petrol station were inundated by floodwaters.
Cooke asked those living along a 500-kilometer (310-mile) stretch of Australia’s east coast, both north and south of Sydney, to consider canceling their school holiday travel plans because of the weather.
In the previous 24 hours, emergency services responded to 29 flood rescues and were called out more than 1,400 times, she said.
The east coast flooding event in March, which was caused by heavy storms that devastated Sydney’s west, claimed the lives of 20 people.
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