CANBERRA, Australia: Torrential rain lashing Australia’s east coast on Sunday has extinguished a major wildfire and caused widespread flash flooding.
Rain put out the Currowan Fire south of Sydney late Saturday after it destroyed 312 homes and razed 500,000 hectares over 74 days, the New South Wales state Rural Fire Service said.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said he hoped the heavy rain would move inland from the coast and drench more major fires that have burned for months.
Fitzsimmons bid farewell at a Sydney Airport hotel on Sunday to 21 American and 21 Canadian firefighters who were heading home after their deployment battling Australian blazes.
A severe weather warning was in place on Sunday along most of the New South Wales coast and parts of Queensland to the north, with heavy rain, damaging winds, abnormally high tides and damaging surf forecast.
The State Emergency Service reported six flood rescues overnight near Grafton, north of Sydney. They were mostly people who became stranded while attempting to drive through floodwater.
Some east coast towns have received in recent days their heaviest rainfall in five decades.
On Australia’s northwest coast, Tropical Cyclone Damien made landfall late Saturday as a category 3 storm and weakened as it moved inland.
Several buildings had lost roofs, but authorities had yet to assess the full extent of the damage on Sunday.
Australian wildfires that have killed at least 33 and destroyed more than 3,000 homes in an unprecedented fire season that began late in a record-dry 2019.
Rain extinguishes Australian wildfire and causes flooding
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Rain extinguishes Australian wildfire and causes flooding
- Hopes heavy rain would move inland from the coast and drench more major fires that have burned for months
- Australian wildfires that have killed at least 33 and destroyed more than 3,000 homes
Ethiopia arrests 22 over human trafficking
- The migrants were instead held in Libyan warehouses
- The gang made more than $13m by trafficking 1,800 people
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian police said they had arrested 22 people accused of trafficking almost 2,000 people, part of a sprawling network that saw at least two people die and the accused net millions.
The vast country is one of the continent’s main departure points for migrants to the Gulf and Europe, and a hotspot for scams and traffickers.
Police said late Tuesday the accused formed “criminal gangs” and offered people “false hope that they will enter Europe and live a better life after traveling through Libya.”
The migrants were instead held in Libyan warehouses, forced to contact their families for money, and essentially “held hostage until the ransom was paid.”
The gang made more than 2.16 billion biir ($13 million) by trafficking 1,800 people, leading to at least two deaths and 15 disappearances, police said.
In August, Ethiopia sentenced five people to death for human trafficking, state media reported, though the country has not carried out an execution since 2007, according to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
