NSW bomb cyclone batters coastal communities with heavy rain and strong winds

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Authorities in NSW responded to hundreds of calls for help, as a bomb cyclone brings destructive wind and rain to the state's coast.  The weather system is causing flash flooding and power outages from the Hunter Region to the Illawarra.

Transcript

00:00Lord Howe Island first in line as a bomb cyclone moves towards the New South Wales coast.

00:10On the mainland, Sydneysiders battled the conditions by boat, by air and on foot.

00:17How are you finding the wither?

00:19Lovely, as you can tell.

00:21I've got to say, this is quite extreme, even for me.

00:25The State Emergency Service has received more than 1,400 calls for help in the past 24 hours.

00:32This system is a very dynamic system.

00:35It is fast moving and very different to recent events that we have seen in New South Wales.

00:41The impact of the storm is concentrated from the Hunter region to the Illawarra,

00:46with warnings of isolated rains of up to 120 millimetres and winds of up to 125 kilometres an hour.

00:54The gusts were capable of bringing down trees like this one in Barrack Heights near Wollongong.

01:00We have seen a lot more calls for requests of assistance.

01:03A lot of roof damage, trees coming down.

01:05SES volunteers door-knocked in Wanborough on the state's central coast,

01:10telling residents to leave as erosion threatens their homes.

01:14Just in a very nervous, vulnerable position.

01:17As you can see out there, it's about two metres from the house now.

01:22The weather has left more than 16,000 residents without power and throttled airport operations

01:28in Sydney to one runway, resulting in 120 flight cancellations across the day.

01:34But the forecasters are warning there's more chaos to come.

01:38We're certainly not creating a panic situation.

01:41What we want to do is create a strong awareness of what lies ahead.

01:44Residents as far south as Gippsland in Victoria could see multiple waves of the storm

01:50before it eases up on Thursday.

01:56So, when we're seeing the city of Gippsland at the 37 to bear,

02:02we're the two of these concretions and poverty programs.

02:04That's fordi we're also unlike any other的illoind blij footage,

02:06but the manifester I noticed for that person has rescued or better figured.

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