As Victoria’s Great Ocean Road flash floods show, we need to get better at taking warnings seriously |
The images and stories of flash flooding coming out of Victoria’s Great Ocean Road overnight have been described as “terrifying”. It’s easy to see why.
Holidaymakers at Victoria’s Wye River watched as cars were swept out to sea and a caravan park was rapidly inundated. Some had to get new clothes at an op-shop.
One resident at nearby Separation Creek told the ABC:
We missed being killed probably by about ten seconds […] we just ran for our lives.
I’ve been studying floods and flood risks for decades. On the one hand, this was a shocking event, due partly to the bad luck of such a heavy downpour occurring in an area with many geographic risk factors for flash flooding.
On the other hand, it was not surprising. These one-in-hundred chance floods will occur somewhere every year, and with climate change these kinds of events will become more intense and more frequent.
In fact, due to global warming over the last 30 years, there is clear evidence the intensity of such thunderstorm events have increased by 15–20%.
The challenge with these kinds........