SYDNEY: Floods caused by heavy rain in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Jasper cut off several towns popular with tourists in Australia’s northeast along the Great Barrier Reef on Monday (Dec 18), with a crocodile being captured from a storm drain.
Jasper dumped months’ worth of rain in the far north of Queensland state over the weekend, forcing some people to flee homes and crowd on rooftops to escape fast-rising rivers.
“The problem is the rain won’t stop and until it eases up, we can’t get aerial support into remote places,” the state’s premier, Steven Miles, told ABC Television.
“We see a lot of natural disasters and this is just about the worst I can remember.”
Jasper was downgraded to a tropical low after leaving a trail of destruction across the state last week.
In Ingham, a town of about 5,000 inundated by floods, conservation officials captured a 2.8m-long crocodile in a storm drain by a gas station, media clips showed.