Three people have been reported missing amid floods inundating the NSW hunter and mid-north coast. Acting NSW police commissioner Peter Thurtell is speaking live:
Sadly, as the premier has already indicated, one life has already been confirmed lost. And we have reports of three other people missing.
I know the message has already gone out, and the premier and the commissioner of the SES have just mentioned it, really, the danger of driving or walking through flood waters cannot be understated, and people need to avoid doing that.
Updated at 20.46 EDT
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Pacific Highway submerged as major arterial remains closed near Taree amid NSW floods – video
Pacific Highway submerged as major arterial remains closed near Taree amid NSW floods – video
Lisa Cox
Summary of NSW floods press conference
Summarising that media conference with the NSW premier and emergency services just now: one man has died and authorities hold grave fears for three people reported missing in unprecedented flooding on the NSW mid-north coast.
The premier, Chris Minns, said the region had experienced a very difficult 48 hours and more heavy rain was expected.
Updated at 20.59 EDT
NSW police and premier hold ‘grave fears’ for three people reported missing in floods
Acting NSW police commissioner Peter Thurtell confirms a 60-year-old woman in the Dorrigo area, a 25-year-old man in the Wauchope area, and a 49-year-old man have been reported missing.
The 25-year-old is believed to have driven into flood waters and a vehicle is reported missing. The 49-year-old is believed to have walked into flood waters.
“That’s all yet to be confirmed,” Thurtell says.
I don’t want to pre-empt any results of anything, but obviously, as we said, we hold grave fears for all three individuals.
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, also said “we’ve got grave fears” for the three people:
The grim reality is that the community on the mid-north coast will have to brace for potentially more bad news in the day ahead. It’s not what we want to hear, but unfortunately this disaster was major.
Updated at 20.54 EDT
Three missing in NSW floods
Three people have been reported missing amid floods inundating the NSW hunter and mid-north coast. Acting NSW police commissioner Peter Thurtell is speaking live:
Sadly, as the premier has already indicated, one life has already been confirmed lost. And we have reports of three other people missing.
I know the message has already gone out, and the premier and the commissioner of the SES have just mentioned it, really, the danger of driving or walking through flood waters cannot be understated, and people need to avoid doing that.
Updated at 20.46 EDT
State emergency services minister on rain levels: ‘These aren’t the records that you want to break’
The emergency services minister, Jihad Dib, says the state government is “throwing every single thing we’ve got” at the response to the rains and floods inundating NSW’s Hunter and mid-north coast regions. He is speaking live:
Our hearts go out to the family of the deceased gentleman. As you’ve just heard, we’ve got an incredibly volatile situation.
I said a few days ago that this will break some records, and these aren’t the records that you want to break, but we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast area than we’ve ever seen before.
We’ve seen an impact that’s affecting tens of thousands of people. But we’ve also seen the way that our emergency services have responded.
Around 2,500 personnel are on the ground, including SES, police, ambulance, fire and rescue, surf lifesavers and marine rescue, Dib says.
We are throwing every single thing that we’ve got at this incident.
Updated at 20.34 EDT
SES commissioner says flood-affected zones are still an ‘active environment’ for rescues
Wassing says affected commuties have not seen this level of flooding in living memory. The NSW SES commissioner says new flood rescues requests have continued to come in this morning:
We continue to have flood rescue calls come in. We have worked through nearly all of the flood rescues from the previous 24 hours, but again already this morning we’ve had another 33 flood rescue requests this morning. That shows that this continues to be a very active environment for us.
I do acknowledge for the communities that we are dealing, within many communities, record floods. So, in the living memory of those local communities, they have not seen this level of flooding.
Flooding in Port Macquarie, New South Wales. Photograph: Lindsay Moller/EPAShare
Updated at 20.25 EDT
SES commission urges people to be ‘situationally aware’ and listen to emergency warnings
The NSW SES commissioner, Mike Wassing, says there are 140 flood warnings active in affected Hunter and mid-north coast regions, with 34 of those being emergency warnings.
He urges people in affected areas to listen to warnings, but to also be “situationally aware”. Wassing is speaking live:
When we say emergency warnings, they are around evacuations through to either, in some cases … moving to higher ground or isolating areas.
I will continue to stress the importance of heeding the warnings and that this is about us trying to help the communities prepare well in advance to any potential flood waters.
We still have a very active situation in the context of the rainfall of 100mm through to embedded storms [storms embedded within other cloud layers]. The embedded storms will continue to see flash flooding.
The flash flooding is a high risk [for] anyone that is travelling on the roads, and again you need to be situationally aware and not just rely on the warnings. We will continue to put the warnings out, but you cannot just rely on the warnings. If you live in areas that you feel that you’re unsafe or have concerns, that is a very good time to actually relocate, in many cases.
Updated at 20.23 EDT
Chris Minns gives update on NSW floods response
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, is speaking live alongside the minister for emergency services, Jihad Dib, and the NSW SES commissioner, Mike Wassing, about flooding in the Hunter and mid-north coast.
The premier says:
This natural disaster has been terrible for this community. It’s affected a wide number of people. It’s affected tens of thousands of houses and, as a result, we are bracing for more bad news.
Minns says another 100mm of rain is forcasted over the next 24 hours, with falls reach as high as 200mm and 300mm in isolated areas.
Again [this] is not what we need, given the huge amount of rainfall that’s fallen in the last 48 hours.
Rivers around Taree and Kempsey are stable or slightly receding, “however there is more rainfall in the mountains and we can’t guarantee that it will not peak again,” the premier says.
Updated at 20.20 EDT
Lisa Cox
Coffs Harbour resident warns of potential significant flooding after months of saturated conditions
Mark Graham is a resident of Coffs Harbour where there has been intense rainfall overnight that is expected to continue today. He told Guardian Australia:
I’m in the very middle of Coffs Harbour and we have had persistent torrential rainfall for many, many hours through the night.
This is on top of months of saturated conditions, so all this heavy rainfall is immediately running off. If it doesn’t ease up we will have really significant flooding problems.
Graham said the forecasts predicting the heavy rain would continue today and potentially into tomorrow were “a real worry”. He said:
The oceans are at such high temperatures, there’s so much heat in the oceans it’s just driving these extreme events.
Updated at 19.55 EDT
Port Macquarie underwater as floods hit
Pictures are in of flooding in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, this morning as a slow-moving trough inundates the east coast.
Flooding around Settlement Point Road in Port Macquarie, NSW. Photograph: Lindsay Moller/AAPShort Street, Port Macquarie. Photograph: Lindsay Moller/AAPSettlement Point Road. Photograph: Lindsay Moller/AAPShare
Updated at 19.52 EDT
Abbott says Liberal National split like ‘walking away from political family’
Abbott likens the coalition split to “walking away from political family”. The former prime minister said on 2GB:
Let’s not shoot yourself in the foot by walking away from your political family, which is effectively what’s happened here.
I mean, the Liberals and the Nationals have been the most successful political partnership in Australia. They’ve governed the country for 51 of the last 76 years. Generally speaking, they’ve done a pretty good job. Why blow it all up just because we’ve suffered a disastrous loss?
I mean, work out what went wrong, sure, but it wasn’t the coalition that was at fault here. It was the fact that we did not adequately prosecute our good policy, and we didn’t adequately create a contest with the Labor party. People did not vote against the fact that the Libs and the Nats are together. They voted against the fact that we were not a sufficiently clear alternative to the Labor party.
Updated at 19.30 EDT
Tony Abbott says Liberals were in policy agreement with Nationals pre-election
Abbott says the coalition split is “inexplicable” given the policy issues the Nationals sought guarantees on “were all things that the Liberal party had agreed with the Nationals on pre election”.
The former prime minister said on 2GB:
If they can be policy pre-election, it’s hard to see why they couldn’t be policy post-election, subject, of course, to the usual joint party room shadow cabinet processes. So it does seem to be pretty inexplicable given that all of these things could have been dealt with in the normal way, through the normal processes.
Updated at 19.54 EDT
Abbott says Liberal-National split ‘recipe for permanent poor government’
Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott calls the coalition split “deeply regrettable,” and says the Liberals and Nationals “need to get back together again as soon as possible”. He is speaking on 2GB:
The history shows that the coalition wins together and loses separately. The Liberal and the National party, they win together and they lose separately. And I think it’s very important that there is a strong and clear alternative to a deeply underwhelming government. And if the Libs and the Nats go their separate ways, we won’t have one strong opposition. We’ll have two opposition parties that are fighting each other as much as they’re fighting a bad government …
It’s a recipe for permanent poor government in our country. So I think for our country’s sake as well as for their own sakes, the Liberal party of the National party need to get back together again as soon as possible.
Tony Abbott at a Liberal party election night event earlier this month. Photograph: Dan Peled/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 19.18 EDT
The Hunter and mid-north coast of New South Wales have been inundated with heavy rainfall since Tuesday, and subsequent flooding has resulted in hundreds of people being rescued by the SES.
Guardian Australia’s Nick Evershed and Josh Nicholas have created interactive maps to show the extent of the rainfall, areas affected by flooding, and how the rainfall compares to historical averages.
Check them out here:
ShareNationals MP warns flooding will affect food production and the cost-of-living crisis
Kemp says local producers will be struggling for months after intense rains and floods have inundated the New South Wales Hunter and mid-north coast regions.
The Nationals MP is speaking on ABC News Breakfast from Wittitrin:
The Macleay is the second fastest-flowing river in flood in the southern hemisphere. We have significant impacts to farmers and shopkeepers. Everyone is doing it tough in a cost-of-living crisis at the moment and now we’ve got to deal with the recovery from such a large event like this and that’s not even to the fact that we haven’t even got through the response phase yet because we are expecting further rises with the rain that’s coming at the moment. I’d expect our graziers, shopkeepers, vegetable-producers, to all be struggling in the next few months
Updated at 20.18 EDT
Nationals MP gives update from Wittitrin
The Nationals MP Michael Kemp is speaking on ABC News Breakfast from Wittitrin, where he is isolated at home as rain inundates the New South Wales Hunter and mid-north coast regions.
He says:
I’m isolated at home. This is my farm behind me. In Kempsey CBD we’ve seen the height of the river reach 6.88m. It’s a major flood warning. We have many, many isolated communities throughout the Macleay, all the way out to South West Rocks and Crescent Head. We have seen three to four rescues by the wonderful SES through the night and we’re expecting significant rain today.
Updated at 20.18 EDT
Victorian police investigating suspicious house fire after three injured
Police are investigating a suspicious house fire that sent a woman and two children to hospital with serious injuries in Victoria, last night.
Emergency services were called to reports of a blaze at a residence in Chadstone about 9:40pm, Victorian police said in a statement.
A woman and two children were evacuated and taken to hospital with serious injuries.
“At this stage, the fire is being treated as suspicious,” police said. An investigation is under way and a crime scene has been established, where an arson chemist will attend later today.
Updated at 18.33 EDT
Minns: ‘We’ve got to do better’ on Sydney rail network
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, says “we’ve got to do better” after Sydney commuters experienced severe disruptions after a high-voltage wire collapsed on a train on Tuesday afternoon, crippling the city’s rail network. He said on ABC News Breakfast a short while ago:
I think the commuting public has been sick of the service that hadn’t been provided. It’s a basic requirement of the state government to get people to and from work on time and we haven’t been doing it. We’ve got to do better.
We’ve put about $1.5bn into the infrastructure of the heavy rail network, so that’s not including the metros that run, that we’re building underground at the moment. That’s the heavy rail infrastructure, but we need to make sure it runs well and appropriately.
We need to focus on punctuality. And communication is a key thing. Sometimes there’s a major disruption to the network and it’s easier for families to organise their lives if the news comes through at 6:00pm rather than 6:00am. It’s too late in the morning if you’ve got kids and the job starts soon and there’s a lot of things happening so they’re things we need to clear up. I know we’re on a short leash and we’ve got to do better.
Crowds at Town Hall station at the peak of rail chaos on Tuesday. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAPShare
Updated at 18.29 EDT
Josh Butler
PM shares statement after death of man on NSW mid-north coast
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has shared a statement on the death of a man in floods in NSW.
“This is devastating news that a man has died at a residence impacted by flooding on the New South Wales mid north coast,” the PM said in a written statement.
“The thoughts of all Australians are with his loved ones and the community at this time.”
Updated at 18.02 EDT