Thousands of volunteers assisting flood victims in Australian state of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia Thousands of volunteers have rallied to help flood victims in Australia, following the worst flooding disaster on record in the state of New South Wales. Debris in a street in Lismore, New South Wales, following floods. PICTURE: Courtesy of St Vincent de Paul Society Clare Van Doorn, regional director for the north-east of New […]
Essay: Crowdfunding disaster relief offers hope in desperate times. But who gets left behind?
As parts of the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland face devastating floods, MATTHEW WADE, a lecturer in social inquiry at La Trobe University in Victoria, looks – in an article published on The Conversation – at the rise of crowdfunding campaigns in response…
Australia declares east coast floods a national emergency
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australia declared a national emergency on Wednesday in response to devastating floods along its east coast, and designated catastrophe zones in towns swept away by swollen rivers. “Australia is becoming a harder country to live in because of these natural disasters,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday after touring the worst-hit Northern […]
Sydney faces more rain as death toll from Australian floods rises
Melbourne, AustraliaReuters Sydney, Australia’s most populous city that has been drenched in rain for days, braced for more heavy downpours on Sunday as the death toll from flooding across the country’s east rose to 17. A wild weather system that dumped more than a year’s worth of rainfall over a week in southern Queensland and […]
“We can all support each other” – Amid floods in Australia, Northern Rivers residents rally to help
Evans Head, New South Wales, Australia The sound of helicopter rotors as they drop off food supplies has become a normal sound in the coastal village of Evans Head, on the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Surrounded by floodwaters, there has been no way for supply trucks to come in and stock the two […]
Half a million face flood evacuation as Sydney braces for more heavy rains
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australian authorities on Thursday issued fresh evacuation orders for thousands of Sydney residents after heavy rains triggered flash flooding in Australia’s largest city, with officials warning of worse to come. The country’s east coast has been battered by a severe weather system that has cut off entire towns and submerged hundreds of homes […]
People flee to rooftops as “weather bomb” submerges Australian towns
Updated: 5:20pm (AEDT)Sydney, AustraliaReuters Tens of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate as heavy rains smashed Australia’s east coast on Monday, submerging towns and stranding residents on rooftops, with authorities warning of life-threatening flash floods. Nine people have been killed since the deluge began last Thursday, and rescue teams were searching on Monday for […]
Australia suffers deadliest day of pandemic as Omicron drives up hospital cases
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australia on Tuesday suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic as a fast-moving Omicron outbreak continued to push up hospitalisation rates to record levels, even as daily infections eased slightly. Australia is dealing with its worst COVID-19 outbreak, fuelled by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus that has put more people in hospitals […]
Omicron variant detected in more countries as scientists race to find answers
Reuters The Omicron coronavirus variant spread around the world on Sunday, with new cases found in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia even as more countries imposed travel restriction to try to seal themselves off. The World Health Organization said it is not yet clear whether Omicron, first detected in Southern Africa, is more transmissible than […]
Sydney adds four weeks to lockdown as Australia COVID-19 cases grow
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, extended a lockdown by four weeks on Wednesday after an already protracted stay-at-home order failed to douse a COVID-19 outbreak, with authorities warning of tougher policing to stamp out non-compliance. Far from a planned exit from lockdown in three days, the city of five million people and neighbouring regional […]