SYDNEY: Police in Australia’s Northern Territory warned of “crocs everywhere” on Sunday (Mar 8) and said they had moved more than a thousand people across the state into shelter after massive floods.<\/p>\n
The state has endured heavy rains over the weekend, with the town of Katherine experiencing its worst flooding since 1998.<\/p>\n
Police evacuated more than a thousand people across the territory on Saturday, with helicopters and aircraft deployed to communities in remote areas.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t get much bigger,” police incident control acting commander Shaun Gill told journalists.<\/p>\n
He said “at least” 90 homes were without power and warned residents against swimming in the waters.<\/p>\n
“There are crocs absolutely everywhere. Please don’t go in the water. The message is quite clear,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Don’t swim in the water for two reasons: It’s a fast-flowing river, and also, this is where crocs are most active.”<\/p>\n
Assistant police commissioner Travis Wurst also warned residents of Katherine not to “do something silly” and jump in the water.<\/p>\n
He warned of “crocodiles and other things that will make your life difficult”.<\/p>\n
A number of schools will remain closed into Monday due to the flooding, Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said.<\/p>\n
More than 100,000 saltwater and freshwater crocodiles are estimated to be living across northern Australia.<\/p>\n
The vast Northern Territory is one of the country’s most sparsely populated areas and is frequently hit with extreme weather.<\/p>\n
Researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change amplifies the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY: Police in Australia’s Northern Territory warned of “crocs everywhere” on Sunday (Mar 8) and said they had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1246,85933,192,24483,79],"class_list":["post-511159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-australia","tag-crocodile","tag-environment","tag-flood","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}