The SES, BOM and police are updating Tasmanians about the severe weather situation affecting the state.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Tasmania has endured a very prolonged period of strong winds and severe weather, and we
00:10had a very significant cold front cross the state last night, and that brought some destructive
00:15winds to parts of the north and west and damaging winds elsewhere.
00:19Some stations actually recorded their strongest gusts in decades, so it was a very significant
00:24wind event.
00:25The winds have eased a little bit this morning, but we are seeing them increase again ahead
00:29of another significant cold front that will cross this evening.
00:33So this evening we will see those strong winds redevelop across parts of the north and the
00:38west, and we may even see some destructive wind gusts across the west coast and parts
00:43of the north coast and northeast elevated areas.
00:47That's most likely to be this evening and overnight tonight, with winds easing tomorrow
00:52morning.
00:54So we could see some strong, more damage tonight.
00:57Luckily, parts of the southeast, including Hobart, are out of the warning area for tonight,
01:03so really the main risk is into the north and the west.
01:08We will see the winds ease tomorrow, and then we are looking at a few days of much lighter
01:12winds from Monday night and throughout Tuesday.
01:16With that significant cold front tonight, we are seeing some more rain move across the
01:20state, and we will see some high rainfall return to parts of the west and the northeast.
01:25So overnight tonight, we could see rainfall amounts of around 30 to 40 or 50 millimetres
01:31across parts of the west and elevated areas into some saturated catchments.
01:36The heaviest rainfall is expected from around early this evening until just after midnight
01:42tonight.
01:43So I will continue.
01:46So over the last few weeks, with these frequent rain bands and strong winds, we have seen
01:51a lot of rainfall into the west.
01:53Over the last seven days, we have seen over 200 millimetres across many elevated areas
01:58in the west.
02:00So grounds are saturated, many dams are full and spilling, and elevated streams and high
02:08stream flows.
02:09So we are expecting to see elevated rivers over the coming 24 hours.
02:18So with the rainfall tonight and the saturated grounds, we do have a flood watch out for
02:22northern, northwestern, northeastern catchments.
02:27However, we do have a major flood warning out for the Derwent.
02:30It is likely we will see major flooding below Meadowbank overnight tonight and during tomorrow,
02:37and we are likely to see significant flooding downstream of Meadowbank across the Macquarie
02:43Plains and even down to New Norfolk over the next one or two days.
02:49And all the little streams and tributaries that flow into the Derwent are expected to
02:53have significant rises, and we may see flooding through those streams as well.
02:58In the north, there is a moderate flood warning out for the Meander, the Mersey, the North
03:03Esk and the South Esk.
03:05And with the saturated soils and the rain tonight, there is a chance we may even see
03:09the possibility of major flooding across some of those rivers over the next day or two.
03:15So please keep an eye on the warnings for that.
03:18In particular, we are monitoring closely the Mersey, where there is a slight risk we
03:22may even see major flooding over the next day or two.
03:26And so we've had widespread wind and storm damage over the past 24 hours.
03:31That's been across the state, but in particular on the north, northwest and west coast.
03:38We continue to see the impacts of that.
03:41We've got minor and moderate flooding occurring across the state.
03:45And in particular, we're concerned about the situation within the Derwent River below Meadow
03:51Bank.
03:52SES have received 323 requests for assistance over the past 24 hours, a huge effort from
04:00our volunteers that have just done a fantastic job in just really difficult conditions.
04:05We continue to work through some of those requests.
04:08We've had to triage those because of the sheer volume, and we're going to continue to work
04:11through those today.
04:14We're going to see and potentially increased to damaging winds tonight and a repeat of
04:20this.
04:21So it's something we continue to monitor and our SES volunteers are ready to assist the
04:26community as required.
04:28Regarding the Derwent River below Meadow Bank, there is a flood emergency warning that is
04:35active for people to prepare to leave in around that area from Meadow Bank down as far as
04:44Macquarie Plains.
04:47And so we are encouraging people to be ready to move as necessary and to really monitor
04:52those conditions.
04:54In relation to the current weather event from a Tasmania Police perspective, we've responded
04:58to almost 600 incidents in the 24 hours to 7am this morning, which is a significant increase
05:04in our normal daily activities, with quite a number of those obviously being related
05:08to the weather event.
05:11In relation to the Derwent Valley, we've currently established a Police Forward Command
05:14Post at New Norfolk and working with our emergency services partners to keep the community safe
05:20in that area.
05:21I'm aware there's a number of door knocks taking place.
05:25We're monitoring road conditions, we'll close roads where we need to and provide advice
05:29to the community.
05:30Our priority is the community safety and we would ask the community to work with us in
05:35relation to that, to heed advice, to heed safety messages, not to go into these areas
05:43if you don't need to be there, never drive through floodwaters.
05:48We ask the community to keep up to date with our latest warnings and that can be obtained
05:52through the TasAlert website or through the Tasmania Police website, so there's updated
05:57information in relation to the current situation, including road closures.
06:02So again, we just ask the community to work with us to ensure their safety and we will
06:07be out and about with our emergency service providers to endeavour to keep the community safe.
06:15We've been hit very hard overnight, particularly along the north coast and the west.
06:22We have currently over 280 outages and about 30,000 customers without power.
06:30We have 26 crews in the field today working hard to try and restore those customers, but
06:37I expect that we will have customers out overnight.
06:42Again we're going to be hit tonight with more winds, I expect more outages.
06:46I would encourage people to stay away from any of our assets that they spot on the ground.
06:53It's important that you stay at least 10 metres away.
06:56We will attend and make safe.
06:58Our priority is safety, public safety and safety of our staff, so in the first instance
07:04we'll make safe and then we will restore power as quickly as we can.
07:08But this is going to go on for another few days as we repair the assets damaged by some
07:13extremely destructive winds last night.
07:16Was TAS Networks prepared for 30,000 outages?
07:19We, last Sunday we had some forward information on the weather event from BOM and so we declared
07:26an emergency situation and we got everybody we could ready for this.
07:31We were expecting over 10,000 customers out and indeed it is more severe than that, so
07:36this is a particularly impactful event, but our crews are out there working hard and I'd
07:43ask the public to remain patient with us as we restore power.