29 March, 2024
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Perrottet to tour NSW flooded regions

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Major flooding continues in numerous towns across regional NSW with more than a dozen catchments overflowing, as rain eases but the flooding risk remains.

Premier Dominic Perrottet will begin a tour of flood-affected regional areas on Tuesday, after writing to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to request further funding, vowing to leave no impacted community behind.

“Our agricultural communities and farmers were looking forward to a bumper harvest,” Mr Perrottet said on Monday.

“This has been a tragic time for many families in regional NSW. We’ve gone through a drought four years ago, and now we’ve gone through floods.”

The request for grant funding for primary producers, small businesses and regional councils comes as the federal government is set to hand down its first budget on Tuesday, in less than rosy economic circumstances.

Deputy State Emergency Commissioner Daniel Austin said there were more than 140 flood warnings stretching from the Queensland border to the Victorian border, 23 of those at the emergency warning level.

“I don’t think some people really grasp the magnitude of really what we are facing across all of NSW at the moment,” he told Nine’s Today show on Tuesday.

There are thousands of kilometres of highways and roads underwater and nearly 1000 SES volunteers, NSW agencies, interstate agencies and the ADF are involved in the crisis.

“It’s a massive, massive undertaking,” Mr Austin said.

More SES crews are heading to Moree in the north, where there is extensive inundation and nearly 4000 people have been warned to evacuate.

Major flooding is occurring at multiple inland towns, including at Wee Waa, Warren, Moree, Gunnedah and Moama in the south.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jonathan How said overnight the heaviest rain fell on the NSW South Coast, with more than 100 millimetres at Bega, where numerous flood warnings are current.

“Thankfully what we have seen across the north-east of the state in Lismore, the Wilsons River hasn’t peaked at the major level so we are seeing minor flooding there,” he said.

The focus on Tuesday will be across the NSW north-east with the possibility of severe thunderstorms that could produce localised flash-flooding, and strong winds.

It comes after two low-pressure systems brought widespread severe thunderstorms to the state on Monday.

Damaging winds, large hailstones and heavy falls hit towns including Mudgee, Orange, Katoomba, Lismore, Grafton, Orange, Dubbo, Cobar and Bourke.

A woman’s body was recovered from a flooded river’s edge in the NSW central west on Monday.

A multi-agency search began late on Sunday after a woman, 28, disappeared when the vehicle she was in was washed off a causeway near Gulgong, north of Mudgee.

Three people, including the 45-year-old male driver and two male passengers, escaped the vehicle but the woman was swept away.

After an extensive search, police said a body, believed to be the missing 28-year-old, was found on the riverbank at 9.50am on Monday.

-AAP

The post Perrottet to tour NSW flooded regions appeared first on The New Daily.

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