Heavy rains in Australia's east flood Sydney streets

STORY: :: Heavy rain causes flash flooding in Sydney, prompting rescues and evacuation orders

:: June 8, 2024

:: Sydney, Australia

:: Deborah Platz, Deputy Commissioner, NSW State Emergency Service

"The weather has been contracting and today most of New South Wales you will see only limited amounts of rainfall. But that does not mean that the risk is not there because what we are going to see now is riverine flooding in many areas, particularly in the west of Sydney and this will continue predominantly throughout today and hopefully will ease later this afternoon and into tomorrow."

:: Jihad Dib, NSW Minister for Emergency Services

"The fact of the matter is our dams are full, our waterways are full, our grounds are saturated. So the impact of the rain that we are having at any given time is having a much more profound effect and as a result of that we have invoked a number of warnings, evacuation warnings, areas that have been evacuated."

Emergency authorities said they carried out 13 rescues and received 297 calls for assistance from residents in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state, in the 24 hours to 5 a.m. local time, because of floods sparked by the heavy rain. The nation's weather forecaster warned that major flooding could occur in the northwest of Sydney, a city of about 5 million, later on Saturday.

Flooding is the second-deadliest type of natural disaster after heatwaves in Australia, accounting for about 20% of natural disaster deaths between 1900 and 2022, according to the federal government's Australian Climate Service agency.