Rescue workers urged thousands of people to evacuate their homes yesterday after deadly storms lashed Australia's east coast, leaving parts of one city looking like an earthquake had struck, officials said.
The death toll rose to nine when police found the body of a man who died after he was swept into a stormwater drain on a flooded road.
Authorities earlier found the body of a man who died when his car was swept off a highway into a swollen creek.
PHOTO: AFP
His wife and three young children, aged two, three and nine and who were traveling with him, also died when the road collapsed underneath them, but their bodies had been found earlier.
Although bringing much-needed rain to Sydney and towns to its north, the storms have wreaked havoc since slamming into the city and the Central Coast and Newcastle to the north on Friday.
Among the dead are a 29-year-old man crushed when a tree fell on his car near Newcastle and a couple who perished when their vehicle was swept off a bridge while crossing a flooded river in the Hunter Valley.
Officials said Newcastle looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake.
"What I saw were parts of Newcastle that resembled the kind of damage that followed the [1989] earthquake," New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said after visiting the city.
"Construction sites and scaffolding, debris on roads, abandoned cars, homes that were damaged, trees having fallen on homes, extensive damage," he said.
The 1989 earthquake had a magnitude of 5.6 and killed 13 people.
Newcastle resident Harry Gregory told the Sunday Telegraph that he fled his home after his bed and fridge started to float in the floodwaters.
"Everything's ruined," he said. "I have a lounge [sofa] stuck in my front fence and I have got no idea who it belongs to."
Emergency workers evacuated 400 people from their homes along the Central Coast overnight, including by boat and helicopter, and yesterday were urging some 5,000 residents in Maitland and Singleton to the north to seek shelter away from rising floodwaters.
State Emergency Services spokesman Steve Delaney said the Hunter River could peak at 11m higher than normal later in the day.
"There is a real, clear possibility that the levy might overtop this evening," he said.
Backed by gale force winds, the storms have driven a huge freighter aground in Newcastle, forced the suspension of ferry services on Sydney Harbour and blacked out tens of thousands of homes.
Prime Minister John Howard said those affected by storms and flooding would be entitled to cash payments in addition to natural disaster funding offered by the state government.
"I know I speak for every Australian in saying that the country is thinking of you and we're heartbroken by the loss of lives and the tragic circumstances in which a number of people have lost their lives," he said. "It is an immense disaster."
Maritime officials said the 30,000-tonne vessel Pasha Bulker, still stranded on a Newcastle beach after running aground amid huge seas on Friday, had some power restored to it and appeared to be intact.
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