Australia flood toll rises to 20 as thousands evacuate Sydney

The death toll from week-long floods battering Australia's east coast rose to 20 on Tuesday, after the bodies of a man and a woman were discovered in floodwaters in Sydney.

Police said it was "suspected" the pair are a missing mother and son whose car was abandoned in a stormwater canal.

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents have been told to evacuate their homes as severe storms and flash flooding inundated swathes of Australia's largest city Tuesday.

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The national weather bureau warned of "a tough 48 hours ahead" for Sydney, with 60,000 people subject to evacuation orders and warnings across the affected areas, according to emergency services.

Intense rainfall across Sydney flooded bridges and homes, swept away cars and even collapsed the roof of a supermarket.

Australian Army soldiers assist the local community of Lismore. AFP

The Manly Dam, in the city's north, began to spill Tuesday, with 2,000 residents told to evacuate.

In the riverside suburb of Georges Hall vehicles were semi-submerged and police had to rescue stranded in their cars by rising floodwaters.

State emergency services have been stretched thin as the torrential rain and intense storms continued into a second week -- with flood warnings in place Tuesday for the entire 2,000-kilometre (1,250-mile) coastline of New South Wales.

"It's very much the watery equivalent of the 'Black Summer' bushfires," emergency services spokesperson Phil Campbell told AFP.

In the past week the scale of the damage to property and wildlife was similar to those devastating bushfires, he said, which ravaged Australia's east for months in late 2019 and early 2020.

"We have also had a similar effect on communities in terms of dislocation with roads closed, infrastructure damaged, power outages," Campbell said.

Australian soldiers work to rebuild a culvert and open up roads. AFP

In the past 24 hours, emergency services were called to 100 flood rescues across the state, a number that is expected to rise as the full force of the storms bears down on Sydney Tuesday.

In the northern reaches of New South Wales — where floodwaters this week destroyed homes, washed away cars and stranded hundreds of locals on their roofs -- a long, slow cleanup is under way.

There are 800 people in emergency accommodation in the state's Northern Rivers region alone, state emergency services commissioner Charlene York.

According to emergency services, almost half of the 5,000 flood-ravaged homes inspected in the region in the wake of the disaster are uninhabitable.

In Mullumbimby, a town cut off from phone service, internet and outside help for days by the floods, local Casey Whelan told AFP that "lots of people in my street can't get flood insurance".

"They will have no way to rebuild," he said.

Australia has been at the sharp end of climate change, with droughts, deadly bushfires, bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef and floods becoming more common and intense as global weather patterns change.

Agence France-Presse