A 44-year-old Australian woman has been found dead in a submerged car after it was swept into a creek by floodwaters while exiting a fast-food drive-through on Thursday night.
Queensland Police Service said officers received reports at around 8 p.m. that night of a sedan that had been dragged by floodwaters into Little Cabbage Tree Creek near Lucan Avenue in the Brisbane suburb of Aspley.
“The driver of the vehicle, a 52-year-old Geebung man, was located alive a short time later and assessed by Queensland Ambulance Service personnel,” the QPS statement read.
“Following an extensive response involving police and emergency services, the sedan was recovered about 11.15 p.m.,” QPS said in a statement.
“The passenger of the vehicle, a 44-year-old Geebung woman, was located inside the vehicle and pronounced deceased at the scene.”
QPS Sergeant Mark Jones told the Courier Mail the pair were exiting the Hungry Jacks drive through to merge onto Gympie Road.
“They’ve driven into the floodwater, and the force of the floodwater has swept them into the creek,” Jones said.
“The male occupant was able to free himself and swim to an embankment.”
She points towards water rushing under the bridge that runs over Little Cabbage Tree Creek on Gympie Road.
“So all that is flooded, and the car went like down there, like, all the way back,” she said, pointing into the bushes beside the creek.
The Epoch Times understands that in the 24 hours to 5 a.m. on Friday, State Emergency Service (SES) crews in Queensland received 88 requests for help as wet weather batters in the northern Australian state.
A further 39 calls for help came in from across the state later on Friday, with 25 of those in Brisbane. The majority of requests were for leaking roofs and sandbags in the Brisbane, Moreton Bay, and Gold Coast areas.
Large parts of Australia’s east coast, spanning thousands of kilometres from Queensland to New South Wales (NSW), its southern neighbour, are experiencing heavy rains due to the La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean and other climate driving factors such as common changes to the global ocean current circulation patterns that influence Australian weather.
Another woman died when the car she was in became trapped in floodwaters in Tuross, on the NSW south coast, on Friday. The 37-year-old woman exited the car and was swept away. A man travelling with her was found nearby and did not require medical treatment.
The NSW SES recovered the woman’s body at about 7.15 a.m. on Friday.
NSW SES crews have conducted 12 flood rescues around the state, two-thirds of them on the south coast amid heavy rain.
The heavy rains have come after Australia saw a particularly wet spring from September to November—saturating the soil and catchments across large parts of eastern Australia.
It was the wettest November since records began in 1900, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) spring climate summary.
According to BOM forecasts, more floods are expected over the local summer months.
