Australia redoubles troop deployment to Sydney floods

Sydney, Australia, Jul 6 (EFE).- The Australian authorities announced Wednesday that they are redoubling the deployment of the military in the city of Sydney and the towns affected by the torrential rain and floods.

Some 85,000 people are under evacuation orders or warnings in the New South Wales region, 50,000 more than on Tuesday, said NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in Sydney, giving the report on the areas declared under a natural disaster.

In response to the catastrophe caused by these torrential rains, which are subsiding in Sydney and moving north, the Australian government will deploy 250 additional defense personnel from Thursday to affected areas.

It will also send a third helicopter to these communities, where 100 soldiers and 1,000 volunteers have been working since the beginning of the week to help with evacuations, rescues and containment tasks.

“This still remains a dangerous situation and we need to respond appropriately,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday at the press conference with Perrottet about the military deployment.

Albanese also announced one-off payments of AU$1,000 ($681) per adult and $400 per child in 23 flood-affected areas.

Several communities, some of them flooded for the fourth time in 18 months, remain cut off from rising rivers, which have blocked roads and bridges, flooded houses and streets and submerged cars.

Although the rain has subsided in Sydney and southern communities, the danger of flooding and landslides will continue in this coastal region where many of the vegetables and fruits consumed in the city are also produced.

“Australia has always been subject of floods, of bushfires, but we know that the science told us that if we continued to not take action globally on climate change then these extreme weather events would be more often and more intense,” Albanese said. “And what we’re seeing, unfortunately, is that play out.”

In March, several areas of NSW, including western Sydney and Lismore, about 600 kilometers north of the city, were affected by devastating floods, which claimed more than 20 lives and caused millions of dollars in material damage.

The natural disaster forced Australian authorities to declare a national state of emergency for the first time in the country’s history, a mechanism legislated in 2020 after a series of devastating bushfires. EFE

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