“It has never rained like this before” – “The flood of the century”: thousands of people fleeing in Australia – News

• Severe flooding in southeastern Australia has forced thousands of people in and around Sydney to evacuate their homes.
• According to the authorities, as of Monday there were 20 evacuation orders. In Australia there is already talk of a “flood of the century”.

According to the Prime Minister of the State of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, 18,000 people were saved, 15,000 of them in the coastal region north of Sydney and 3,000 in West Sydney.

“I’ve never seen rain like this before”

In the area around Port Macquarie, about 350 kilometers north of Sydney, it had rained almost 900 liters per square meter in some places in six days. This corresponds to about one and a half times the annual rainfall in Berlin. “I have never seen rain like this before. I have worked through many floods, and this is the biggest I have ever faced in my career, ”said NSW’s civil protection chief, national radio station ABC of the situation in Port Macquarie.

According to the Australian Minister for Emergency Management, heavy rains could last two more days. Up to 54,000 residents of New South Wales could be affected by the floods. There were a total of 40 flood warnings on Monday. Authorities had already classified the situation in parts of New South Wales as a natural disaster on Sunday. Some places on the north central coast experienced the worst flooding since 1929, it was said.