Australia is still struggling through unprecedented floods. Major floods are still keeping communities on alert while others are beginning the huge clean up.
Southern Queensland is beginning the tremendous task of cleaning up after catastrophic floods swept through the region last week and now regional towns in regional Victoria are on high alert for major flooding.
Monday afternoon the SES issued an evacuation warning for approximately 111 residents in areas they believe to be flood affected in and around Horsham. Horsham is the largest rural town in Western Victoria’s Wimmera region. The rural town is approximately 300 km northwest of the state’s capital of Melbourne and is on the highway linking Melbourne and South Australia’s capital Adelaide.
At 3.58 pm AEDT the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reported the reading at the Walmer gauge (downstream from the township) is currently at 3.92 metres and still rising. Authorities had originally been anticipating for the peak to reach 3.80-3.85 meters tonight to early Tuesday morning.
BOM have advised on their website they’re expecting the river to continue rising slowly with the peak likely overnight Monday into Tuesday.
“SES has been busy undertaking sandbagging for what is expected to be a one-in-200-year event,” SES spokesman Hugo Zoller told AAP on Monday. “It is a major flood, possibly the most significant flooding in recorded history for northwest Victoria and for Horsham.”
Electricity supplier Powercor is sandbagging its substation at Horsham and Kerang in North West Victoria in an attempt to protect supplies after 8000 customers around the state lost power on the weekend after the substation in Charlton became inundated with floodwaters.
Some local businesses in Horsham’s CBD are starting to evacuate as flood waters begin to flow into the streets. The town is on edge as the Wimmera River which snakes through the town is likely to split the town in half – north and south by tonight.
This afternoon ABC Online is relaying warnings from the SES that much of Victoria’s north-west need to prepare for major flooding in the coming days. Spokeswoman for SES, Jennifer Roberts, says it is not just river communities that can expect to be cut off by floodwaters. “Some of that is actually tens of kilometers away from where the actual river is, so we’re asking people right across that area to be prepared for flooding,” she said.
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