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Australian residents continued fleeing their homes and sandbagging properties Tuesday as a major town was threatened by a worsening flood disaster that has unleashed a plague of snakes and crocodiles. Tens of thousands of people in Rockhampton braced for complete isolation as waters, which have inundated an area bigger than France and Germany and closed the town's airport and railway, lapped at the last remaining road link. Rumors of crocodile sightings swept the besieged cattle-farming center northeast of Brisbane, population 75,000, while snakes up to two meters long were spotted around the town center. The snakes, including highly venomous taipans, brown snakes and red-bellied blacks, are climbing trees and hiding in people's houses as they search for dry refuge, residents said. "The snakes are a massive problem; I've shut all the doors because they're coming in," said Suzanne Miller, owner of the Pioneer Hotel pub, adding that her mother was "almost killed" by a brown snake. "She is living on a boat near here, and it was curled round the rope," Miller said. "She could feel the tongue flicking on to her face to test how far away it was, ready to bite, and then it jumped into her lap." Miller said her mother's husband used a stick to flick the snake into the water, adding that the boat almost capsized as the pair leaped around and screamed in panic. Emergency officials warned that the snakes were aggressive, while crocodiles flushed from rivers by the rising floods could easily be mistaken for debris. Snakes are "in their mating season, and they've been flushed out of their environment ... snakes are very, very cranky right now," State Emergency Service (SES) Operations Director Scott Mahaffey said. He added that "the problem with crocodiles now is it's very, very hard to pick (them out) with the amount of debris." One SES volunteer told AFP he had seen "two cops hightailing it out of the water with a croc going past." Thousands of poisonous cane toads were also spotted around Rockhampton while authorities say the town will also be hit by sandflies and disease-carrying mosquitoes breeding in the standing water. AFP |
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