Emergency services issued a warning for people to leave the area as floods threatened more than 130 properties in eastern Australia on Thursday.
According to David Baker, deputy chief of the state’s emergency service, the McAllister River in Victoria’s eastern region has flooded due to heavy rains, endangering rural properties.
“We estimate up to around 130 properties may be impacted by this event, hence why we issued an emergency warning,” he said.
Emergency services issued alerts during the course of the previous night advising people to leave low-lying areas close to the McAllister and other flooded rivers in Victoria’s Gippsland region east of Melbourne or migrate to higher ground.
In another part of Gippsland, firefighters were battling bushfires that covered thousands of hectares and necessitated the evacuation of more than a dozen rural neighborhoods two days earlier.
The upcoming Australian summer is predicted by experts to offer the most violent bushfire season since 2019-2020 after many wet years.
Bushfires erupted across Australia’s eastern shore during that “Black Summer,” razing vast tracts of forest, killing millions of animals, and shrouding cities in smoke.
