Residents in parts of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales have begun the mammoth clean-up following ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred’s wild weather.
Many rivers and catchments across the two states remain at major or moderate levels but are slowly receding as the rain has significantly eased back in the past 24 hours.
Sky News Australia meteorologist Rob Sharpe on Tuesday said flooding remains in place across landscapes, but most are “pretty much at their peak right now or are dropping”.
Showers will persist over flooded areas along the east coast and there is potential for severe storms in the inland areas between Moree in NSW and Roma in Queensland.
“Meanwhile the south-east of Queensland after heavy storms yesterday morning, we’re now back to showers… so nothing all that major, just an annoying little bit of wet weather around that may hamper some of the clean-up efforts today,” Sharpe said.
Northern Rivers catchments receding
The flooded catchments across the Northern Rivers are subsiding.
NSW Premier Chris Minns said the immediate threat has reduced overnight.
There are no longer any emergency alerts or warnings in place, only watch and acts and advice level notices as the weather begins to ease across northern NSW.
Residents forced to evacuate or who chose to leave will be allowed to return home on Tuesday, but have been urged to be extra cautious about live powerlines and debris.
Mr Minns also encouraged those who had been severely impacted from ex Tropical Cyclone Alfred to apply for government assistance to help get them back on their feet.
In partnership with the Albanese government, the NSW government is offering a one-off payment of $180 for individuals and up to $900 is available for families who were subject to an evacuation order and told to leave or had power cut off for at least 48 hours.
The Personal Hardship Assistance Grant will be provided to residents of the declared affected local government areas in northern New South Wales.
Government areas eligible include Armidale, Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Dungog, Glen Innes Severn, Kempsey, Kyogle and Lismore.
Residents of Lord Howe Island, Mid Coast, Nambucca Valley, Port Macquarie-Hastings, Richmond Valley, Tenterfield, and Tweed will also be eligible.
For more details on the financial assistance and eligibility criteria, residents can visit NSW Government’s Cyclone Alfred Recovery or the Services Australia website.
Homes to be demolished due to squatters
The Minns government has decided to demolish the homes taxpayers spent to remove Northern Rivers residents out of harms way following the devastating 2022 floods.
The Resilient Homes Program announced in October last year saw 836 buy-back offers approved to those living in flood-prone areas, with the green light also given for assessments on houses for possible retrofitting or to raise them to protect against future wet weather events.
But when ex Tropical Cyclone Alfred emerged, squatters entered some of the homes in the Northern Rivers and were living in them during the rain and flood emergency.
Mr Minns said it was “unbeknownst” to him that the government was in court trying to execute eviction notices to squatters who took advantage to move into an empty house.
“This is a completely unacceptable set of circumstances. It’s not tolerable to have so many people located in flood-prone land still in danger and have SES personnel, volunteers go and check on those households and communities to keep them safe,” he said on Monday.
“I’ve made the decision in conjunction with the Reconstruction Authority that we’re going to demolish those houses. We’re going to make sure these communities are safe.
“We can’t have large number of people in harms way after NSW taxpayers spent millions of dollars trying to make the community safer.”
The NSW Premier stressed he is not trying to exacerbate the housing issue and that the state government had injected millions of dollars on homelessness services in the Northern Rivers as well as emergency accommodation and social housing as part of the budget.
The demolition will begin in coming weeks.
Ipswich flood fears ease
There was a major concern for the city of Ipswich, south-west of Brisbane, with fears the Bremer River could exceed the major level of 11.7 metres and peak at 12.35 metres.
However, it peaked at 11.57 metres overnight and was sitting at 10.62 metres as of Tuesday morning 5:30am (AEDT) and is falling, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Potential dam releases, which would have caused flooding fears for upstream towns such as Goodna, may not need to happen as concern has eased.
Brisbane has also avoided devastation likened to the 2011 and 2022 floods, but are still in for a mammoth clean-up with homes and businesses inundated from days of rain.
Power outages remain
More than 125,000 homes across south-east Queensland and northern NSW remain without power on Tuesday after days of rain and storms from the ex-tropical cyclone.
According to Energex, close to 119,000 customers are still in the dark, with the Gold Coast, Redland City, Brisbane, Moreton Bay and Logan areas most affected.
There are also thousands of reports of outages across northern NSW.
Energy Queensland chief operating officer Paul Jordon said repair crews had done a “phenomenal job” to restore power to more than 80,000 homes in about 24 hours.
“We’ll have about three quarters back on tomorrow, looking at around 95 per cent by Friday and we’ll pick up those that are really difficult over Saturday and Sunday,” he said.
Mr Jordon said they were able to act quickly thanks in part to his emergency management team who met two weeks ago to plan how to respond after Alfred.
There could still be a chance homes will lose power due to ongoing flooding.
Not all properties will be connected to power by the end of this week as energy crews are being cautious and not driving or working in or near floodwaters.
“There will be some installations where they’ve been damaged by water, so we won’t be able to connect those. And those customers need to talk to their electricians and we’ll get back there as soon as they’ve been fixed up,” Mr Jordon said.
