Damage assessments are underway in Western Australia’s north after fruit plantations were hit by flash floods last Friday, reported the ABC.
The Gascoyne River, near one of the state’s premier fruit producing towns of Canarvon, peaked at 7m before it began to drop, destroying about 20 per cent of plantations along the banks according to State Emergency Service estimates.
“We’ve currently got two teams out doing assessments of those low lying plantation areas just to get an indication of the degree of inundation of houses and other buildings on the plantations and some general idea of soil loss that’d affect productivity,” said the Service’s Ernie Reynolds.
“It was caused by the aftermath of Cyclone Dominic. It’s probably unusual, it was a relatively quick event for the Gascoyne River; normally there’s a reasonable lead time but this was a fairly fast event.”
