On Friday morning, the trucks moved to Windsor, north-west Sydney, to begin removing furniture and items ruined by the city’s flooding, as the army also moved in to help residents with the cleanup. .
Meanwhile, some residents in the north of the state are far from the clean-up process: houses near Maitland are still threatened due to rising river levels.
The Bureau of Meteorology last recorded the height of Belmore Bridge in Maitland at 10.38 meters at 4:45 on Friday morning, but the NSW SES expects the river level to reach 10.7 meters in sometime on Friday morning.
During an update on the flood situation on Friday, NSW Emergency Minister Steph Cooke announced that six more regions would be immediately eligible for payments for natural disasters.
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Earlier this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that flood victims from 23 regions could access emergency payments of $ 1,000 per adult and $ 400 per child in financial assistance.
Residents affected by the floods in areas of the Hunter region such as Bayside, Dungog, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Singleton and Upper Lachlan will also have access to the funds, bringing the total number of regions to 29.
Cooke said more areas could be added.
“This is the first step in unlocking support for these communities,” he said.
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“As we move forward, as more areas of local government can be assessed and we are aware of the damage, we will make more declarations of natural disasters together as needed.”
After touring the regions affected by the floods this week, Albanese defended his trip to Fiji to attend the Pacific Islands Forum next week.
Albanese had recently been criticized by the opposition for its recent international travel program, which included an invitation to Ukraine by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.
“It’s a cheap shot, frankly, and the opposition needs to be more mature in its response,” Albanese told Today Friday morning.
“I was in the flood zone the morning after I came back [from Ukraine]. When I went to the NATO summit and went to Ukraine, there were no circumstances there, here in the Greater Western Sydney and the Hunter and Illawarra that have occurred this week. “
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