Floods, power cuts as wild weather bashes eastern Australia

QUEENSLAND - Gusts and torrential rain have blacked out more than a quarter of a million properties and swamped parts of Australia's east coast, officials said on March 9, with one driver confirmed dead and a dozen troops injured in the wild weather.

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After days hovering off the coast as a Category 2 tropical cyclone and battering a 400km stretch of coastline, Tropical Cyclone Alfred weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall on the evening of March 8.

But as the remnants of the cyclone moved inland, hundreds of thousands of people remained without power on March 9, and video images showed knee-high water pouring through roads in some of the worst-hit areas of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales.

A total of 23cm of rain fell on the Queensland resort of Hervey Bay in just a few hours, flooding homes and forcing emergency rescues, said the state's Premier, Mr David Crisafulli.

The weather system "continues to pack a punch" as it moves inland, he said, adding that more than 1,000 schools shuttered across the state would gradually start reopening on March 10.