SYDNEY
Wild weather blacks out 300,000 properties in Australia
Gusts and torrential rain have blacked out more than 300,000 properties and swamped parts of Australia's east coast, officials said on Sunday, with one driver confirmed dead and a dozen troops injured in the wild weather.
After days hovering off the coast as a category 2 tropical cyclone and battering a 400-kilometer stretch of coastline, Alfred weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall on March 8 evening.
But as the remnants of the cyclone moved inland, hundreds of thousands of people remained without power yesterday, and video images showed knee-high water pouring through roads in some of the worst-hit areas of southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales.
A total of 23 centimeters of rain had descended on the Queensland resort of Hervey Bay in the past hours, flooding homes and forcing emergency rescues in rapid waters, the state's premier, David Crisafulli, told a news conference.
The weather system "continues to pack a punch" as it moves inland, Crisafulli said, adding that more than 1,000 schools shuttered across the state would gradually start reopening today.
Utility companies said about 290,000 homes and businesses in southeast Queensland and another 16,000 in northeast New South Wales were still without power yesterday.
"Customers need to be prepared to be without power for several days," Queensland's Essential Energy said.
About 14,600 people are under emergency warnings related to the weather system in New South Wales, the state's emergency services said.