At least one Maltese expat was forced to leave her home after entire neighbourhoods were evacuated due to heavy rainfall and flash flooding that devastated parts of northeast Australia for nearly two weeks.
John Dougall told the Times of Malta his 30-year-old daughter, Ilona, was forced to climb into a military boat that picked her from where the road once lay and leave her house behind as a third evacuation warning was sounded in her neighbourhood of Rosslea in a matter of days.
The woman is now living in a military base with her husband, sleeping on stretchers, having also spent some time in an emergency evacuation centre in a school gymnasium.
“We were worried when we started hearing about how bad the situation really was. Luckily, our daughter is okay but many in the area lost everything,” Mr Dougall said.
A monsoon ravaged parts of north Queensland, particularly the coastal city of Townsville where Mr Dougall’s daughter has lived for some two years.
In the space of 10 days, Townsville received more than its annual average rainfall and broke records in terms of successive days of rain exceeding 50mm.
I’m just happy she is safe. Now it is a matter of taking it day by day
Images of roofs of family homes barely breaking over the surface of the murky brown flood water made the international headlines in recent days and Mr Dougall said he felt lucky his daughter had bought her home on rather high ground.
“Unlike many in Townsville, my daughter’s home is not on low ground, so it took only about 60cm of water rather than several metres,” he said.
Still, the water that had entered her house was mixed with affluent and had damaged power points and furniture.
“The rain and wind started to die down, so my daughter could head back to the house to check the damage. You could say that, unlike others, Ilona is lucky that she maintained her home insurance, which means she is covered for the damages,” Mr Dougall said.
The Insurance Council of Australia said on Monday it had revised upwards its estimate of insurance losses. This was now put at about €29 million, involving some 3,500 claims.
The council expects that figure to rise significantly as people return to their homes. This has been occurring gradually throughout the week, although the authorities insist many homes are still unsafe.
Some banks have even suspended home loan repayments for three months for those im-pacted by the floods and had to make emergency works.
Waiting to hear from his daughter, with whom he has maintained contact through online messaging apps, Mr Dougall said the whole experience of watching the news and seeing an entire suburb underwater was “quite surreal”.
“I’m just happy she is safe. Now it is a matter of taking it day by day,” he said.