A woman has been killed by a falling tree on the New South Wales-Victoria border as a severe weather system brought damaging winds to Australia’s south-east.
Destructive cold fronts were forecast to move north to Sydney and coastal NSW on Monday after bringing strong winds and flooding to Tasmania and Victoria overnight, according to Christie Johnson, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.
Victoria’s State Emergency Service received 2,800 calls for assistance from Sunday 7pm to Monday 10am, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said at a press conference on Monday. Of these, 1452 remained active.
There were more than 1,000 reports of fallen trees and more than 350 homes damaged by winds, according to the SES chief operations officer, Tim Wiebusch.
More than 150,000 customers were without power in Victoria and more than 25,000 in Tasmania early on Monday after energy distributors reported outages, though the numbers were significantly lower by lunchtime.
Rivers across Tasmania were at risk of flooding, with 20 flood warnings in place after parts of the state recorded rainfalls of up to 60mm at the weekend.
The bureau expected the Derwent River to surpass the major flood level on Monday morning, inundating or isolating roads and homes.
Two road crew workers suffered from severe but non life threatening injuries overnight.
Tasmania’s SES warned residents to leave their homes immediately in towns surrounding the Derwent River near Meadowbank and Macquarie Plains. About half the residents had evacuated on Monday morning, according to the Tasmania SES executive director, Mick Lowe.
Tasmania was battered by severe weather at the weekend, with significant damage to trees, properties, power lines and infrastructure.
Currently up to 37,000 customers are without power, said Ben Duffy, the TasNetworks fault lead. He warned delays may be experienced “up to the next five days”, with customers already cut off from electricity for the last two days.
The North West Regional hospital, one of Tasmania’s four major hospitals, was reliant on generators overnight as power was cut. Power has now been restored but Felix Ellis, Tasmania’s police, fire and energy management minister, warned of potential outages in the coming days.
Two Victorian government schools, Saint Helena Secondary College in Eltham, and Yarra Ranges Special Development School in Mount Evelyn were closed on Monday due to the weather. Several non-government schools have asked students to learn remotely, with some schools left without power, Allan said.
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The bureau issued a severe weather warning for destructive winds across the NSW coast and most of Victoria.
Gusty winds forced authorities to cut speed limits on the Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge to 40km/h.
High winds resulted in some flights to Melbourne diverting. Cebu Pacific flight 5J49 was due to arrive at 11.18pm, but diverted to Brisbane and instead arrived at Melbourne at 5.27am.
Fierce winds of 141km/hour were recorded at Faulkner Peak in Port Phillip Bay, which the Bom Meteorologist Kevin Parkyn said was “close to a record” for that location.
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He said the state’s severe weather warning had been downgraded to no longer include destructive winds, though warnings were still in place for localised damaged wind gusts. He expected the warning would only apply to coastal areas in Gippsland later this afternoon, and be cancelled tonight.
Southern and alpine NSW had received 80 emergency calls on Monday morning as winds pushed up out of Victoria, according to the NSW State Emergency Service.
The SES was expecting damage similar to that experienced on Wednesday, when destructive winds led to 1,100 calls, a spokesperson said.
Parts of the Victorian and NSW coasts faced abnormally high tides, erosion risks and dangerous surf conditions.
Coastal NSW also faced an elevated fire risk, with an extreme fire danger warning for the Illawarra and high fire danger in greater Sydney – with a total fire ban in both regions on Monday.
NSW police said a woman, 63, had died after a tree fell on a holiday park cabin in Moama. Emergency services were called just before 4am on Monday and officers found the woman’s body. A 63-year-old man was treated by for minor injuries and taken to hospital.
In a statement, a spokesperson from Tasman Holiday Parks said: “We extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of both cabin occupants and our thoughts are with the gentleman currently being treated in hospital.”
The spokesperson said some employees were “very distressed by this terrible accident”.
The wild weather was forecast to ease on Monday in Victoria and Tasmania and overnight in NSW.
Wind gusts up to 120km/h were possible until Monday afternoon.