The tail end of powerful Cyclone Debbie, which last week left a trail of destruction in northeast Australia, lashed New Zealand yesterday, closing highways and causing a major landslide.
The storm hit parts of New Zealand still recovering from a devastating earthquake in November last year and weather officials warned of several days of heavy rain, with some regions set to receive three months’ worth of rain in the next 48 hours.
“This is a significant amount of rain and people are advised to watch out for rapidly rising rivers and streams, flooding and slips,” the Met Office said in a severe weather warning.
Photo: EPA
As darkness fell, a state of emergency was declared in the city of Whanganui on North Island, with its mayor saying that mandatory evacuations were likely at first light as rivers were forecast to rise to dangerous levels.
“We have about 20 hours to save your precious things, maybe raise things, maybe check on your elderly neighbor,” Whanganui Mayor Hamish McDouall said.
Weather officials issued a swathe of rain and wind warnings covering the entire North Island and north of South Island.
Cyclone Debbie, a category 4 storm, one short of the most powerful level 5, last week pounded Australia’s Queensland state, smashing tourist resorts, bringing down power lines and shutting down coal mines.
Australian police yesterday retrieved three bodies from a car beneath floodwaters in the swollen Tweed River of New South Wales state, taking to six the number of people killed since the storm hit.
New Zealand’s mountainous terrain makes its roads susceptible to landslides and many regions are still recovering from November last year’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake.
The highway into the earthquake’s epicenter of Kaikoura was closed yesterday, just hours after reopening following a week-long closure to shore up about 20 potential slip sites. A second major arterial road was blocked by a landslide.
New Zealand’s Civil Defense Force was on standby as other roads were closed and at least one school was evacuated.
In Australia, where the disaster zone stretched 1,000km from Queensland’s tropical resort islands and Gold Coast tourist strip to the farmlands of New South Wales, about 20,000 homes were still without power yesterday, as floodwaters continued to rise in some areas.
Residents of Rockhampton, in central Queensland, were advised to seek higher ground as the rising Fitzroy River approaches a peak forecast for tomorrow.
Australian insurers have declared the event a catastrophe, with state officials saying recovery and repairs will need months.
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