Homes have been damaged, and schools are closed in parts of Western Australia’s south after record rain hit the region overnight. Emergency services had a busy night responding to 150 calls for assistance.
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00:00We've actually had the wettest day on record here in Albany to 9 a.m. this morning.
00:06There was 126.4 millimetres of rain and a lot of that came in a really short amount
00:12of time.
00:13Lots of places recorded 30 millimetres of rain and that was within sort of half an hour
00:17to an hour and that has meant, you know, this torrential downfall that's hit the guttering
00:22and a lot of places were saying because of that and that heavy rain they had flooding
00:26in homes.
00:27We've also seen flooding in a number of classrooms.
00:30A local daycare centre was unable to open today because they just said we've got to
00:34focus on the clean-up.
00:35Near where I am now, I'm just in front of the main street of town, that's where the
00:39local library is and they were also shut today because of flooding.
00:43Several other nearby businesses and restaurants have also closed because of that amount of
00:46water that just came so fast.
00:48Overall, there was, as you said, 150 calls for help, 135 were here in Albany.
00:54Across the Great Southern, it was a similar picture, a lot of rain and some of that was
00:58actually good news.
00:59We spoke to a farmer who said this is perfect timing heading into seeding.
01:04And what are the priorities now?
01:06Yeah, obviously the priority is continuing that clean-up, making sure schools are able
01:11to open for Monday.
01:13That daycare centre, as you spoke about, is also able to open.
01:16There's been lesser impacts in terms of roads, the major roads that are run by Main Roads
01:21But potentially, you know, there's quite a lot of damage to the lesser used dirt roads
01:25around the area.
01:26So getting those up to a level that is usable again, that's obviously another priority.
01:31There is also more rain that's expected to come later today, so we'll be watching that
01:34one very closely.
01:35Yeah, and Rosemary, were you there when the rain came down?
01:39We've just seen some of those images of the storm as it blew through, yeah, really amazing.
01:45No, I was, and I was unfortunately in one of those houses that our guttering really
01:50couldn't take that rain.
01:52We did have sort of an inside shower, which wasn't really ideal.
01:56But luckily, you know, across the region there hasn't been too much damage, so that's obviously
02:00something to be grateful for.