A caravan park in Queensland Gold Coast has had to be evacuated as massive rains sparked bedlam.
Up to 50 people at the Big4 Holiday Park in Helensvale were told to leave in the early hours of yesterday morning a monster supercell dumped more than 300 millimetres of rain.
One man at the site told Channel Nine’s Today program that many people were trying to drive out with their caravans.
“It was chaos, it was just panic,” he said. “Dozens of people trying to get out at once.”
He said he was with his family when his sister yelled out to him in the middle of the night.
Heavy rains have caused major issues. PIC: Benfe / Pixabay
“I got up and thought it’s probably not that bad,” he said. “Within 20 minutes the water was going through our tent, and we were basically knee-deep in water.”
Another camper, Christine Smith, said the extreme rain came as a shock.
“We went to bed at about 9 o’clock and it was sort of sprinkling,” she said. “The next we knew somebody was saying ‘evacuate, evacuate’.”
Big4 holiday park general manager Andrew Hewitt told the ABC that the midnight deluge took everyone by surprise.
“It came out of nowhere, we weren’t expecting that amount of rain,” he said. “I don’t think anyone was!”
Heavy rainfall, flash flooding and damaging winds lashed both northern NSW and southern Queensland, although forecasters say the worst is now over.
Weatherzone meteorologist Joel Pippard told Yahoo News Australia that a third straight La Nina weather event was largely to blame for the deluge.
“The ocean temperatures are much warmer than normal over the Coral Sea area, so that would be the biggest driver I would think,” he said. “It’s incredibly unusual for this time of year because September is actually the month where ocean temperatures are at their coldest so it’s pretty rare to see this kind of rainfall at this time of year.”
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Let this be a lesson for everyone Australia wide, with the rain projection this summer..
Be absolutely aware of you’re camp spots …no matter where you are.
Flash flooding can come out of nowhere anytime.