NSW residents have been told to prepare for more “extreme” conditions after the state’s flood crisis claimed a second life and led to the evacuation of a regional hospital.
The dangerous weather system which has inundated the Northern Rivers region is moving south, with torrential rain expected to cause flooding in parts of Sydney over the coming days.
A severe weather warning is in place for heavy rain and high winds along the NSW coast from Newcastle to Bega, which could cause widespread damage.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast heavy rainfall for parts of Sydney and the Hunter, Illawarra, south coast, as well as parts of the Central and Southern Tablelands districts on Wxjmtzywednesday.
Six-hourly rainfall totals between 80 and 120mm are likely, while some areas could record up to 200mm of rain in a six-hour period, with the possibility of life-threatening flash flooding.
The weather bureau expects the rain to travel further south past Sydney by the end of the week.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet warned “the worst is yet to come” after the Northern Rivers on Monday experienced its wettest day in 139 years.
More than 15,000 people were evacuated during the crisis and hundreds more rescued, some of whom were winched from the roofs of homes or picked up by volunteers on boats.
Police have said the body of a woman in her 80s was found inside a South Lismore home on Tuesday afternoon, the second confirmed flooding-related death in the NSW disaster.
Fifty-five hospital patients in the nearby town of Ballina were evacuated and taken to a makeshift emergency facility at a nearby school, as residents prepared for a one-in-500-year flood.
NSW education secretary Georgina Harrisson said nearly 200 schools were closed due to the floods.
“It’s 130 government schools, 28 independent and 21 Catholic schools, as far as we’re aware at the moment,” she told a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday morning.
“We also have a number of schools operating as evacuation centres … so obviously there is disruption in those schools as well.”
Premier Perrottet and Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke travelled north from Sydney to visit flood-stricken communities on the north coast on Wednesday.
The pair were due to give a press conference later in the afternoon from an SES centre in Grafton.
Government Services Minister Linda Reynolds said more than 145,000 claims for emergency financial assistance had been made since the flooding disaster began in southeast Queensland last week.
She said 35,000 of those claims had been paid so far and that an unprecedented 90,000 requests were made in a single day on Tuesday.
Senator Reynolds said people could apply and “get the money straight away” even if they didn’t have their identification documents on them.
“We’ll worry about the paperwork later,” she told the ABC on Wednesday.
Senator Reynolds said Services Australia staff would visit 11 evacuation centres in Queensland from Wednesday to help people without internet access to apply for the emergency payment worth $1000.
She said government staff would visit NSW evacuation centres to help people who were sheltering there as soon as it was safe to do so.
“Ninety-five per cent of 145,000 claims that have already been received have been done online. We’re getting people out as soon as possible into evacuation centres to provide that support,” she said.
“We are out there as soon as we can. But in this early stage of the disaster it’s still not safe and it’s still not accessible to some communities.”
