PREVIEW

On Friday 6 April, residents of Sydney, Australia sheltered from an unassuming light rain. But when the clouds cleared the next day, the city was submerged.

New South Wales suffered a natural disaster over the weekend (7-8 April), with residents from 2,700 Sydney homes told to evacuate; over 3,000 calls for help to the state’s emergency service (SES); and one man found dead in the water.

Commentators have labelled the event a ‘blue sky flood’ – referring to a flooding event which occurs while skies are clear.

A press release from the New South Wales SES revealed that the predicted light rain from the previous night had actually beaten down the Greater Sydney region, with more than 200ml affecting Sydney and Illawarra.

“The NSW SES carried out more than 160 flood rescues overnight and into this morning, following a severe weather event that resulted in flash flooding and damage to properties and roads throughout Sydney, the Illawarra and South Coast,” the release stated. “As rain conditions clear in the north of the state, Sydney and the Illawarra, NSW SES volunteers are supporting clean up activities and responding to reports of fallen trees, property damage and landslides.”

Although the weather system passed Sydney overnight, the flow of waterways in the region ensured flooding would continue to worsen for select areas even as the sun shined.

“While the significant rain event has now passed and blue skies have returned, flooding is expected to occur for residents in the Hawkesbury Nepean and Colo communities as the rainfall moves into the rivers and downstream over the coming days,” SES Assistant Commissioner Dean Storey explained in a statement.

“I would also like to remind affected communities that significant amounts of rain have fallen in a short period of time, so there is a lot of water across roads, bridges and causeways. If you come across a flooded road, stop, turn around and find an alternate route.”

Chief Superintendent Dallas Burnes appeared on Nine’s Weekend Today with the assurance, “We have seen the highest peak and we’re now following that water downstream and making sure we warn the communities in its path.

“The clean-up [will be] significant … you can’t stop a flood, it’s not like a fire where you can send appliances and defend a dwelling – we’ve really just got to make sure we get people and their livestock out of harm’s way.”

Acting federal minister for emergency management Catherine King later announced that disaster support had been activated for those impacted by the floods.

State minister for emergency services Jihad Dib announced on Sunday that the New South Wales government had declared multiple shires as natural disaster zones and that the SES had performed over 200 rescues since Friday.

“It’s fairly blue skies behind me, but that doesn’t mean that the water danger is over. That the threat of flood is over,” he said. “As we talked about yesterday, there’s a thing called the blue sky flood, where all of the water that feeds into the tributaries, into the local catchment areas basically comes together.”

A spokesperson for the SES also reported that 31 properties were damaged, 21 had been inundated, and seven were uninhabitable due to the floods.

“There are still a number of warnings in place despite the sun being out, there’s still a lot of flooding and it will take a few days for the river levels to reduce below warning levels,” the SES spokesperson insisted. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”