Thousands without power as heavy rain and winds hit Tasmania, Australia

The Star

Tens of thousands in Australia’s Tasmania state were left without power on Sunday (Sep 1) after a cold front brought damaging winds and heavy rain, triggering flood warnings.  Read more at https://tinyurl.com/4fb5cjxd WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00Tens of thousands in Australia's Tasmania state were left without power on Sunday after

00:07a cold front brought damaging winds and heavy rain, triggering flood warnings.

00:12We have currently over 280 outages and about 30,000 customers without power.

00:20We have 26 crews in the field today working hard to try and restore those customers, but

00:28I expect that we will have customers out overnight.

00:32Again we're going to be hit tonight with more winds, I expect more outages.

00:38The nation's weather service reported that while the cold front over Tasmania, an island

00:43state with a population of around 570,000, had eased, it was expected to intensify again

00:49overnight.

00:51Emergency authorities issued warnings for potential flooding, cautioning that some areas

00:56could be isolated for several days.

00:59The state emergency service reported receiving 330 requests for assistance in the past 24

01:05hours.

01:06The SES received 323 requests for assistance over the past 24 hours, a huge effort from

01:13our volunteers that have just done a fantastic job in just really difficult conditions.

01:19We continue to work through some of those requests, we've had to triage those because

01:22of the sheer volume.

01:23Tasmania, located 445 kilometres from the mainland city of Melbourne, is accessible

01:30by a one-hour flight or a ten-hour ferry ride.

01:33About 40% of the island consists of wilderness and protected areas.

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