Flood-hit swathes of Western Australia faced a long path to recovery as muddy waters receded to expose the full scale of damage to homes, roads and livestock.
In the deluged town of Fitzroy Crossing — home to about 1,000 people — the waters collapsed the main bridge, swept away road surfaces and damaged homes over the past week.
The floods created a vast inland lake in the northern part of Western Australia state, also swamping much of Fitzroy Crossing and indigenous communities in the sparsely populated region.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t want to sugarcoat the challenge that lies ahead in terms of both housing and road construction,” Western Australia Minister for Housing John Carey said on Wednesday, according to public broadcaster ABC. “We have got to house people.”
Vast farms in the area are estimated to have lost many thousands of cattle, the Kimberley Pilbara Cattlemen’s Association said.
“The impact on pastoral stations is going to be significant,” Western Australia Minister for Agriculture Jackie Jarvis said yesterday. “We actually won’t know the full impact for many months.”
The flood-struck Kimberley region covers a tract of land three times larger than the UK, but it has a population of less than 40,000.
Australia has been repeatedly lashed by heavy rain in the past two years.
Flash floods swept through parts of eastern Australia in November, tearing entire homes from their foundations in some country towns.
Tens of thousands of Sydney residents were ordered to evacuate in July last year when floods swamped the coastal city’s fringe.
An east coast flooding disaster in March last year caused by storms in Queensland and New South Wales claimed more than 20 lives.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS