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Strong storms that hit Australia’s east coast have claimed the lives of six people, including a little girl.
Overnight, a woman was found dead after flash flooding in eastern Victoria swept through a campsite in Buchan.
The woman’s body was found when the waters receded.
It is the second death during the Boxing Day storms in Victoria.
The storms have caused destruction in Australia’s eastern states.(ABC Western Queensland: Danielle Lancaster)
In Queensland, four people died as a result of severe storms over Christmas and Boxing Day, and three more are missing.
Police say a nine-year-old girl was swept into a flooded drain in Rochedale, south of Brisbane, yesterday afternoon.
His body was recovered overnight after an extensive search.
Off the coast of Brisbane, police recovered a body after a large ship capsized near Green Island in Moreton Bay.
Two of the ship’s passengers are still missing.
North of the Sunshine Coast, two women were swept away by floodwaters in Gympie on Tuesday afternoon.
Police have found the body of a 40-year-old woman. The search for the other woman will continue Wednesday.
On the Gold Coast, a 59-year-old woman died on Christmas night after being hit by a tree.
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Thousands remain without power as cleanup efforts continue
Energex crews spent another night trying to restore power to about 85,000 people in southeast Queensland.
Since Christmas Eve, storms have downed more than 1,000 power lines in the region.
Energex spokesman Justin Coomber said it would take days for the grid to be “fully back online.”
“We’ve had a lot of damage to the high-voltage grid throughout the southeast corner and we’ve seen those 30-meter-high concrete poles snapped in two,” Coomber said.
“We’ve never seen that before, so it’s going to take some time to get this high-voltage network back to a suitable, viable state.”
Woman rescued from river “is lucky to be alive”
Police said a woman and her dog are lucky to be alive after they had to be rescued from the Werribee River in Melbourne’s southwest on Tuesday.
The 29-year-old woman was swept away by a rushing water around 1:30 p.m. after she was trying to retrieve her dog from the river.
A passerby raised the alarm when he saw the woman clinging to a tree.
The Search and Rescue Team and the Water Police rescued the woman and her dog.
ABC/AAP
Woman found dead swept away by flash flood; thousands of people are still without electricity