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Thousands of people evacuated or are preparing to do so in areas of Sydney due to the flooding of rivers due to the torrential rains that continued this Tuesday. Emergency services have ordered around 50,000 people to leave their homes.
Thousands of people evacuated or are preparing to do so in parts of Sydney as rivers swell due to torrential rains that continued on Tuesday, Australian authorities said.
Emergency services have ordered some 50,000 people to leave their homes and another 28,000 to be ready to do so in the face of flooding in the state of New South Wales, according to authorities.
“I haven’t had to evacuate yet. But I live in a high-risk area. I have friends and many Latinos who have had to evacuate their homes because their house filled with water. It is terrible because there are not many high places to move. And it rains day and night,” he declared to RFI Patricia Panameño, a Latina living in Sydney.
“The hydroelectric dam has already overflowed, they had to open it because it no longer gave more. So this water overflowed all around and there are houses there. All these people have had to evacuate and at the moment they are in evacuation centers or with friends or family,” added Panameño.
Rescuers carried out 142 rescues in the last 24 hours in the Sydney area with the support of 100 soldiers deployed in the state.
Heavy rains and flooding caused power outages in some 19,000 homes.
Australia is one of the countries most affected by the consequences of climate change and is increasingly suffering droughts, devastating forest fires, floods and other natural disasters such as the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
“Sydney is not out of the woods, this is not the time to be complacent,” state Emergency Services Commissioner Carlene York told a news conference. “It’s dangerous out there,” she added.
Forecasters forecast the storm front to move north along Australia’s east coast after four days of heavy rain in Sydney.
The federal government has declared natural disasters in 23 flooded areas of New South Wales.
Many of those affected have suffered successive flooding on the East Coast in 2021 and then again in March of this year, when 20 people died.
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