The death toll from Australia’s Christmas storms has risen to six, with three more people missing.
Three deaths were confirmed in south-east Queensland late on Boxing Day, including a nine-year-old girl whose body was found after she was feared lost in stormwater drains in Brisbane.
Her body was found after an extensive search, police said. The girl’s family, from Rochedale South, “are requesting privacy at this difficult time”.
The second confirmed death followed a boat capsizing south of Green Island in Moreton Bay. Eight people were taken to hospital and a search-and-rescue operation launched involving water police vessels, police divers, volunteer marine rescue and coastguard for three people reported missing.
The search found one body but the other two people had not been accounted for when it was suspended just before midnight. The operation was due to continue at first light on Wednesday.
A third body, that of a 40-year-old woman, was found in the Mary River in Gympie. She was one of three swept into the water by the Kidd Bridge. One 46-year-old woman managed to get to safety but another woman, also 46, remained missing.
Gympie’s mayor, Glen Hartwig, said emergency personnel were continuing to search for the woman on Wednesday.
“Police divers have been requested to come in and start to look for this other female and hopefully an end can be brought to this as soon as possible,” he said.
“The family needs the closure and it is a difficult time for them and other friends within our region. We are a very close community, even though we are growing quite rapidly; we do care about one another and to have to share a loss like this at this time of year is certainly tragic.”
In Victoria a woman died after a campground in east Gippsland was hit by flash flooding. Emergency workers were called to the Buchan campground just after 5pm on Tuesday.
“Police were told a number of vehicles in the campground area were under water and a number of people were safely retrieved from a nearby bridge,” police said on Tuesday night.
The woman was found dead about 6.45pm, and police said she was yet to be formally identified.
The Christmas storms had already accounted for one death in Queensland on Monday, when a 59-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree on the Gold Coast, and one in Victoria, where a man was killed after a branch fell on his property in Caringal.
Wet weather also battered parts of New South Wales for a third night in a row on Tuesday, leaving communities on alert to the possibility of flooding.
Angus Hines of the Bureau of Meteorology said conditions were forecast to ease by Wednesday afternoon. “By and large by Wednesday afternoon we’re starting to see the end in sight for this thunderstorm outbreak,” he said.
“Keep an eye on the severe thunderstorm warnings which will be issued and updated all through the day as we monitor and track the development of these severe and potentially dangerous storms.”
Volunteers from the NSW State Emergency Service were kept busy through Christmas and Boxing Day, responding to 473 calls for help and conducting six flood rescues.
More than 80 jobs were recorded on Boxing Day after 4cm hail caused havoc near Maitland in the Hunter Valley, shattering windows and damaging vehicles, skylights and roof tiles.
The suburb of Rutherford was particularly hard hit, with more than 50 people calling for help in less than an hour.
The BoM said further severe thunderstorms were possible around central and northern parts of the Queensland coast on Wednesday, and perhaps in Brisbane, but conditions were also expected to ease across the state by the afternoon.
On Christmas Day storms left more than 120,000 households without power and some were still cut off on Boxing Day, with more than 800 power lines down across the south-east.
At Gympie a wind gust of 100km/h was recorded on Tuesday while golf ball-sized hail was spotted at Zillmere in Brisbane’s north.
At Jindalee in the city’s south-west 62mm of rain was recorded in an hour.
Victoria continued to be battered by thunderstorms on Boxing Day, with the SES responding to more than 1,000 assistance requests over three days.
The bulk of the calls came from Frankston, Shepparton, Bendigo and the state’s west but the focus was expected to shift to the east on Wednesday, with a number of flood warnings issued, according to the SES state agency commander, Alistair Drayton.
