WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Monsoon rains unleashed flooding in Australia’s Queensland that have claimed the lives of two people as the week-long deluge dropped months of rainfall in a few days, devastating small rural towns on the state’s north coast.
The body of an 82-year-old woman was found on Tuesday in a paddock near the North Queensland town of Ingham. It followed the death of a 63-year-old woman on Sunday when the rescue boat she was traveling in struck a tree and flipped.
The rain drove hundreds from their homes, washed out an important bridge and blocked drinking water supplies to the worst-hit area.
Queensland’s north coast is regularly battered by tropical storms, but the destruction caused by this week’s downpour was “quite frankly incredible,” said the state premier David Crisafulli.
A few hundred people remained in evacuation centers on Tuesday as the flooding subsided; it was not yet known how many homes were damaged beyond repair.
The receding waters eased fears that the region’s largest city, Townsville, might face similar havoc to what was recorded in 2019, when floods caused more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($620 million) in damage.
Still, about 2 meters (6.5 feet) of water fell across the state since Saturday, with six months of rain recorded in some areas. A bridge that provides a critical highway link collapsed into the Ollera Creek near Ingham on Sunday, likely hindering recovery efforts and causing long travel delays.
Fewer than 10,000 properties were without power on Tuesday and Crisafulli said officials were working with the military to deliver generators. A severe thunderstorm warning was still in place for parts of the area.
Meteorologists said the monsoon rains were prompted by two tropical low pressure systems, one from a marine heatwave in the Coral Sea — the same atmospheric conditions that have caused floods in the state before. Rising ocean temperatures due to climate change have increased the frequency of such events in Australia.
Meanwhile, scorching temperatures were recorded Tuesday on the other side of Australia, with parts of Western Australia warned of an extreme or severe heatwave, the Bureau of Meteorology said. The agency’s website posted either heatwave or thunderstorm warnings for most states.
Summer weather extremes in Australia have provoked deadly bushfires and record floods in recent years.
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