Soldiers and police methodically pick through the ruins of the tiny town of Grantham, where a wall of water snatched 16 people as 14 others vanished in Australia’s “Valley of Death.”
Residents had little warning of the flash floods that tore through the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane last Monday, ripping houses from their foundations and tossing cars from the road. Dozens had to scramble to rooftops and cling to tree branches as the brown tide thundered by, gathering up everything in its path.
“[There were] just houses falling apart and floating away, and people clinging to tree branches all night that had broken arms and legs,” Grantham resident Sharon Watkins said at the Helidon evacuation center. “Just watching everyone around you calling for help, not being able to do anything, trying to get yourself out alive.”
Sixteen people were killed by the torrent — trapped in submerged homes and cars or swept up in the raging waters — while another 14 are missing. One woman’s body was found 68km downstream.
Home to just 200 people, the town was razed by water of such unimaginable force it has been called an “inland tsunami.”
For every tale of survival there is one of horror — the man stranded for 12 hours on his rooftop who reached out to help locals caught in the churning waters “thinking they were trying to swim.”
“You saw arms, hands, gray hair, and that was it, by the time you knelt down you realize they’re not swimming, they are already gone,” Martin Warburton told commercial television this week. “The water was that turbulent it was just throwing them around ... I can’t describe it, I just can’t describe it.”
Steven and Sandra Matthews managed to lift their children, aged 15 and 20, into the roof cavity of their home, before floodwaters swept them to their deaths.
“People have seen terrible things,” Rachel, 43, said. “My daughter was on the bank of the river, she saw on the other bank a mother and her daughter on the roof of a car. The car was washed away in the river by the wall of water and the two disappeared.”
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS