Australia: Ten dead from storms in Queensland and Victoria

Storms and thunderstorms have caused devastation in eastern Australia. At least ten people were killed in the states of Queensland and Victoria. In the west, however, there is severe drought and bushfires.

According to authorities, at least ten people have died in severe storms in the Australian states of Queensland and Victoria.

According to police, the bodies of three men whose boat capsized off Brisbane the day before were recently recovered. There were a total of eleven people on board. The eight survivors were taken to hospitals and their condition is considered stable.

The body of a nine-year-old girl was also discovered in Brisbane on Tuesday after she disappeared hours earlier in a flooded storm drain. On Monday evening, a 59-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree in the nearby city of Gold Coast. In the town of Gympie, also in Queensland, rescue workers found a 40-year-old and a 46-year-old dead in the River Mary.

Tens of thousands of households without electricity

There were also severe storms in Victoria in southeast Australia. In the town of Buchanan, a man and a woman died at a campsite due to flash flooding. On the same day, a 44-year-old man was killed by a falling branch on his property in Caringal.

Storms of this intensity have never occurred in the region, said Queensland Prime Minister Steven Miles. The damage ran into billions. Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll also spoke of “24 tragic hours as a result of the weather”.

Australian media reported that hundreds of buildings were damaged by storms, floods or hail. The electricity supply in Queensland also collapsed in large regions. Up to 90,000 households there are still without electricity.

Storms in the east, fires in the west

While severe storms cause damage in the east of Australia, the west of the continent suffers from drought and bushfires. Australia is particularly affected by climate change. A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from February 2022 assumes that the country will be hit by devastating natural events even more frequently in the future.