1 month ago
A woman has been killed by a falling tree on the NSW-Victoria border as a severe weather system brought damaging winds to the nation’s south-east.
A wild night brought strong winds and flooding to Tasmania and Victoria which have been hit by a series of destructive cold fronts. In Tasmania thousands of homes lost power and residents on the Derwent river were advised to evacuate amid rising flood waters.
Victoria’s State Emergency Service reported hundreds of calls for help and its website showed reports of trees down and building damage across Melbourne early on Monday morning. Power distributors reported more than 100,000 customers without power.
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The Bom issued a severe wether warning for damaging, locally destructive winds across most of Victoria.
In NSW, there was an extreme fire danger warning for the Illawarra and high fire danger in Greater Sydney, with a total fire ban in both regions on Monday.
NSW police said a woman died after a tree fell on a cabin in Moama, near the NSW-Victoria border. Emergency services were called just before 4am on Monday and officers found the boday of a 63-year-old woman in the cabin’s wreckage, NSW police said.
A 63-year-old man was treated by paramedics for minor injuries and taken to hospital.
The wild weather was forecast to ease in Victoria and Tasmania on Monday as a massive cold front tracked eastwards to NSW, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
“It’s in the early hours … that the winds about the east coast of NSW will really start to increase,” a senior meteorologist, Sarah Scully, said on Sunday.
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A severe weather warning for damaging winds was issued from the Victorian border north to Newcastle and inland to the Snowy Mountains and the Australian Capital Territory.
Wind gusts up to 120km/h were possible until Monday afternoon.
“Winds of these strengths do have the potential to bring down both trees and branches that may cause property damage, also bring down power lines that could lead to power outages, and also loose objects may be blown around and cause further damage,” Scully said.
Tasmania was battered by severe weather at the weekend, with significant damage to trees, properties, power lines and infrastructure.
A flood emergency warning was issued for residents near the Derwent River, Meadowbank to Macquarie Plains and Styx River, Bushy Park to Macquarie Plains and surrounds.
The River Derwent below Meadowbank Dam was likely to exceed the major flood level of 7.3m overnight on Sunday and into Monday, the bureau said late on Sunday.
People in south-east Tasmanian towns on the Derwent – including Meadowbank, Glenora, Bushy Park, Gretna and Macquarie Plains – were urged to enact flood emergency plans and prepare their properties.
The electricity provider TasNetworks said there had been more than 150 outages late on Sunday, with about 10,000 customers without power.
