Sydney: Dozens of Evacuation Orders Issues Amidst Raging Floods

Surf lifesavers evacuating flood-affected residents. 

(Photo: Twitter/@slsnsw)

About 70 evacuation orders have been issued in Sydney, one of Australia’s largest cities, bringing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate on Monday, 4 July, amid flooding in some regions of New South Wales, for the third time in 2022.

Over the weekend, several regions were inundated with heavy rain, receiving around 200mm of rain, reaching a maximum of 350mm in some areas, reportedly due to an intense low-pressure system off the eastern coast of the country.

On Sunday, 30,000 residents of New South Wales were either told to evacuate or warned about potential evacuation orders, and officials warned that more intense weather would follow.

This intense weather is likely to trigger flash floods and landslides as well.

The Climate Council has identified climate change as a major contributing factor to this rainfall as well as the frequency with which regions of Australia are facing such severe weather phenomena, saying that Australia is “under-prepared” to deal with such events.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, “About 100 millimetres (4 inches) of rain could fall in the next 24 hours over a swath of more than 300km (186 miles) along the New South Wales coast from Newcastle to the south of Sydney.”