Douglas Shire Council has made a desperate plea for help to Canberra for military support as it experiences unprecedented rainfall and flooding.
The Far North Queensland shire has been inundated by more than 1500mm of rain since Wednesday.
The region’s major centre, Mossman is currently without power, sewerage and running water. This is wide spread across the Shire, including the World Heritage Daintree Rainforest.
Many residents in town were evacuated to the school halls last night while there have been further evacuations in nearby Wonga Beach this morning.
Douglas Shire Mayor Michael Kerr said the community had been rocked by the surprise amount of flooding.
“Council is grateful for the ongoing assistance from those staff that were deployed last week for Cyclone Jasper but has today reiterated its request for military support to gain the needed manpower for further evacuations and the resupply of food and water to those areas cut off.”
“We’ve asked for urgent deliveries of food and water to be delivered to our isolated communities, including Newell Beach, Wonga, Daintree Village, Mossman, Cape Kimberley and Cape Tribulation,” he said.
“The floods have had a devastating impact on both the community and our infrastructure and without this outside help, it will be impossible to recover.
“Our emergency refuge centres were without food early today, we are having to borrow boats to undertake rescues, communications in the shire are patchy at best and those still able to stay at their homes are using buckets of water to flush their toilets.
“Cyclone Jasper drew a lot of attention but it’s this secondary disaster of major flooding that has left our community in a dire situation.”
