STORM WATER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 124, 29 May 1933, Page 9

STORM WATER.

FLOOD IN SYDNEY.

GIRL FLOATS INTO SHOP.

CAIXS TOR FIRE BRIGADE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, May 26

Last Friday evening one of the storms frequently experienced here at this season of the year struck Sydney in full force. Off the coast a gale was raging, and the sea was running so high and breaking so heavily that all shipping was delayed, and even the Aorangi had to wander down the coast for about 50 miles on "safety first" principles. Inside the harbour the pouring rain made shore lights and ferry lights almost invisible, and during the culminating period of the "blow harbour transport was at a standstill.

Between 5 and 6.30 p.m. the wind blew from 50 to 60 miles an hour, and during that hour and a half more than 2in of rain fell. This meant, for the worst-drained portions of the metropolis, the usual flood, and in George Street West, which always suffers severely in these cases, the inundation was particularly severe. Shoe Factory Loses Stock. In a Waterloo shoe factory the stormwater broke in, carrying the whole stock-in-trade before it, swamping the ground floor and doing damage to the amount of £2000 in ten minutes. Near the Sydney Shoe Store a girl wa6 swept off her feet by the rush of water, and carried ten yards into a shop, whence she emerged an hour later, "partially dry." In a big furniture warehouse the proprietor stood philosophically at the door watching his chairs and tables floating quietly around. At Farmers, the big emporium in Pitt Street, water poured in torrents down the basement into the cafeteria and sent the diners rushing up the streaming stairways into the flooded street. Several of the picture theatres had their ground floors flooded inches deep, and Marcus Clark's big store at Redfern, like many other business houses, had to appeal to the nearest fire brigade to lend a hand in pumping the water out.

Pedestrian Killed. Of course, in the streets locomotion of all kinds was both difficult and dangerous. Motor cars skidded wildly in all directions, foot passengers took their lives in their hands crossing the streets, there were many minor accidents, and ah unfortunate man, blinded by the driving rain, ran into a tram on the Harbour Bridge and was killed instantly.

The storm did not last loag, and it was purely local, so that we were denied the consolation of knowing that the parched inland areas would profit through our discomforts and losses. The rain from these coastal depressions is practically all expended on the sea coast side of the dividing ranges, and very little of it drifts into the interior. But the coastal areas will benefit from this visitation, and we cannot afford to forget that New South Wales is. a semitropical country, and that we must put up with "the defects of its virtues."