Australia ‘underprepared’ for deadly floods despite decades of climate warnings, expert says

Country is ‘at the forefront of severe climate change’, says Professor Hilary Bambrick

Australia is “underprepared” for extreme weather such as the deadly flooding on the east coast despite decades of warnings over the climate crisis, an environmental expert has said.

Professor Hilary Bambrick said the country needed to do more to cope with freak weather events as global warming increases their frequency.

Eastern Australia has been hit by more than a week of torrential rain and flooding, which started in Queensland before moving down into New South Wales. To date, at least 14 people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed.

On Thursday, 200,000 people were evacuated from Sydney and surrounding areas as rivers continued to rise. Meanwhile, Brisbane, which saw flash floods last week, faced severe thunderstorms.

Prof Bambrick, who is involved in Australia’s yearly assessment of its progress on climate adaptation, said: “Despite decades of warnings from scientists about climate change, Australia is unprepared for the supercharged weather that it is now driving, such as the current floods in Queensland and New South Wales.”

She said the country was “at the forefront of severe climate change”, with temperatures rising faster than the global average, which means the atmosphere holds more moisture and leads to more extreme rainfall events.

“Climate change means that Australia’s extreme weather – heat, drought, bushfires and floods – will continue to get much, much worse if we don’t act now,” the environmental epidemiologist and bioanthropologist from Queensland University of Technology said.

A resident moves furniture to a safer place from a flooded farm house in western Sydney (AFP via Getty Images)

Prof Bambrick said there needed to be a “meaningful” reduction in emissions this decade as well as an end to the expansion of coal and gas in Australia. She also called for a national adaptation strategy to “better prepare for increasingly catastrophic events”.

“We need to manage the impacts of what is happening now and make sure those impacts are much less destructive in future,” she said.

Volunteers from the State Emergency Service rescue a llama from a flooded farm house in western Sydney (AFP via Getty Images)

Town centres have been submerged and cut off, homes washed away and power disrupted during the extreme weather that has hit eastern Australia in what has been called a once-in-a-century event.

Tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes, while families spent hours on the roofs of their properties in flooded Lismore, where at least four people have died.

Transport networks have also been disrupted. At one point, residents and horses were left stranded on a bridge after water submerged both ends.

Satellite images on Thursday showed the storm drifting away from Sydney. However, several western suburbs were still battling rising waters.