Australia\u2019s military has been deployed to tackle devastating \u201conce-in-a-century\u201d floods that have inundated homes, schools and airports in the country\u2019s northeast, forcing hundreds to flee and bringing crocodiles onto the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Australian Defence Forces filled sandbags, deployed amphibious cargo vehicles and helped pluck flashlight-wielding residents from their rooftops Monday, as monsoon rains drenched the northern state of Queensland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The authorities were forced to open floodgates late Sunday, unleashing what they called \u201cdangerous and high velocity flows.\u201d Images from the city of Townsville showed cars mostly submerged and picket fences barely poking through waist-deep flood waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Desperate residents had to contend not only with flash flooding, landslides and power blackouts, but also reptilian predators that have been spotted in residential roads and cul-de-sacs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 1,100 people have called the emergency services for urgent help, according to state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.Around 400 Townsville residents have sought shelter at nearby Lavarak military barracks and the Red Cross is also assisting with the response and recovery effort.\u201cSmall boats worked through the night to evacuate members of the community,\u201d said local commander Brigadier Scott Winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Palaszczuk warned the communities face more difficulties ahead. Schools and courts remain closed, more rain is on the way and emergency warnings still in effect for more than a dozen rivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The town of Ingham, just north of Townsville, got over 10 centimetres of rain in just a few hours on Monday morning, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.\u201cThis is unprecedented, we\u2019ve never seen anything like this before,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia\u2019s military has been deployed to tackle devastating \u201conce-in-a-century\u201d floods that have inundated homes, schools and airports in the country\u2019s northeast, forcing hundreds to flee and bringing crocodiles onto the streets. The Australian Defence Forces filled sandbags, deployed amphibious cargo vehicles and helped pluck flashlight-wielding residents from their rooftops Monday, as monsoon rains drenched the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54236,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54234\/revisions\/54236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}