Heavy rain caused flash flooding in Australia's largest city, Sydney, on Saturday, prompting evacuation orders in several suburbs.
Emergency authorities said they carried out at least 13 rescues and received 297 calls for assistance from residents in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state, in the 24 hours to 5am local time, because of floods.
Ten emergency evacuation orders were in place for suburbs in the city's north-west, the New South Wales State Emergency Service (SES) said on Saturday morning.
The nation's weather forecaster warned that major flooding could occur in the north-west of Sydney, a city of about five million, later on Saturday.
Sydney's Hawkesbury-Nepean valley is a floodplain prone to dangerous flooding, as it is fed by five tributaries and has chokepoints limiting flows to the sea, so water backs up during heavy rain.
SES acting assistant commissioner Dallas Burnes told the Australian Broadcasting Corp that there was “still a lot of water moving around” and urged affected residents to be prepared to leave their homes.
New South Wales emergency services minister Jihad Dib said the rain had fallen on swollen catchments, resulting in “a much more profound effect”.
“Our dams are full, our waterways are full, our grounds are saturated,” he said in a televised news conference in Sydney, adding that some roads and bridges had been affected.
The latest emergency comes after more than 150 people were rescued from floodwaters in eastern Australia in April.
Flooding is the second-deadliest type of natural disaster after heatwaves in Australia, accounting for about 20 per cent of natural disaster deaths between 1900 and 2022, according to the federal government's Australian Climate Service agency.
With reporting from agencies …
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It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
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Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
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"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
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MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League quarter-final, second leg (first-leg score):
Manchester City (0) v Tottenham Hotspur (1), Wednesday, 11pm UAE
Match is on BeIN Sports
