Australia
Hundreds evacuated, some by chopper, from New Zealand floods
Several hundred people in New Zealand were evacuated from their homes Monday with some recounting dramatic helicopter rescues as heavy rain caused widespread flooding in the Canterbury region.
Authorities declared a state of emergency after some places received as much as 40 centimeters (16 inches) of rain over the weekend and into Monday. Forecasters warned of possible heavy rain through Monday evening before conditions improved.
The military helped evacuate more than 50 people including several overnight in an NH-90 military helicopter.
Read:Australia’s Victoria state to return to lockdown
One man was clinging to a tree near the town of Darfield when he jumped into floodwaters and tried to swim to safety but was swept away, the military said.
Helicopter crews scoured the water for 30 minutes before finding the man and plucking him to safety. The military helicopter also rescued an elderly couple from the roof of their car.
“Seeing the community overnight pull together and support the displaced residents who were evacuated from their homes has been heartening,” said Army Liaison Officer Cpt. Jake Faber.
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Another man was rescued by a civilian helicopter pilot Sunday after he was swept from his farm as he tried to move his stock to safety.
Paul Adams told news organization Stuff he thinks he got hit by a wall of water he didn’t see coming. He was swept down the raging Ashburton River before managing to drag himself onto a fence and then into a tree. Another farmer spotted his headlamp and organized a rescue mission.
“The rescuers are fantastic,” Adams told Stuff, adding that he was now back on his farm and “good as gold.” He said that so far he’d only found about 100 of his herd of 250 animals alive.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was visiting New Zealand, told reporters that he was thinking of those caught up in the floods.
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“Australia is no stranger to floods,” Morrison said. “Or fires, or cyclones, or, indeed, even mouse plagues. We have, both countries, endured a large amount of challenge over the course, particularly, of these last few years.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern planned to travel to Christchurch later Monday to be briefed on the situation firsthand.
Plague of ravenous, destructive mice tormenting Australians
At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds of scratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.” Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
“We’re at a critical point now where if we don’t significantly reduce the number of mice that are in plague proportions by spring, we are facing an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales,” Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said this month.
Bruce Barnes said he is taking a gamble by planting crops on his family farm near the central New South Wales town of Bogan Gate.
Read:Australia’s Victoria state to return to lockdown
“We just sow and hope,” he said.
The risk is that the mice will maintain their numbers through the Southern Hemisphere winter and devour the wheat, barley and canola before it can be harvested.
NSW Farmers, the state’s top agricultural association, predicts the plague will wipe more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($775 million) from the value of the winter crop.
The state government has ordered 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India. The federal government regulator has yet to approve emergency applications to use the poison on the perimeters of crops. Critics fear the poison will kill not only mice but also animals that feed on them. including wedge-tail eagles and family pets.
“We’re having to go down this path because we need something that is super strength, the equivalent of napalm to just blast these mice into oblivion,” Marshall said.
The plague is a cruel blow to farmers in Australia’s most populous state who have been battered by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years, only to face the new scourge of the introduced house mouse, or Mus musculus.
The same government-commissioned advisers who have helped farmers cope with the drought, fire and floods are returning to help people deal with the stresses of mice.
The worst comes after dark, when millions of mice that had been hiding and dormant during the day become active.
By day, the crisis is less apparent. Patches of road are dotted with squashed mice from the previous night, but birds soon take the carcasses away. Haystacks are disintegrating due to ravenous rodents that have burrowed deep inside. Upending a sheet of scrap metal lying in a paddock will send a dozen mice scurrying. The sidewalks are strewn with dead mice that have eaten poisonous bait.
Read:111-year-old Australian recommends eating chicken brains
But a constant, both day and night, is the stench of mice urine and decaying flesh. The smell is people’s greatest gripe.
“You deal with it all day. You’re out baiting, trying your best to manage the situation, then come home and just the stench of dead mice,” said Jason Conn, a fifth generation farmer near Wellington in central New South Wales.
“They’re in the roof cavity of your house. If your house is not well sealed, they’re in bed with you. People are getting bitten in bed,” Conn said. “It doesn’t relent, that’s for sure.”
Colin Tink estimated he drowned 7,500 mice in a single night last week in a trap he set with a cattle feeding bowl full of water at his farm outside Dubbo.
“I thought I might get a couple of hundred. I didn’t think I’d get 7,500,” Tink said.
Barnes said mouse carcasses and excrement in roofs were polluting farmers’ water tanks.
“People are getting sick from the water,” he said.
The mice are already in Barnes’ hay bales. He’s battling them with zinc phosphide baits, the only legal chemical control for mice used in broad-scale agriculture in Australia. He’s hoping that winter frosts will help contain the numbers.
Farmers like Barnes endured four lean years of drought before 2020 brought a good season as well as the worst flooding that some parts of New South Wales have seen in at least 50 years. But the pandemic brought a labor drought. Fruit was left to rot on trees because foreign backpackers who provide the seasonal workforce were absent.
Plagues seemingly appear from nowhere and often vanish just as fast.
Read:Australia won’t buy J&J coronavirus vaccine
Disease and a shortage of food are thought to trigger a dramatic population crash as mice feed on themselves, devouring the sick, weak and their own offspring.
Government researcher Steve Henry, whose agency is developing strategies to reduce the impact of mice on agriculture, said it is too early to predict what damage will occur by spring.
He travels across the state holding community meetings, sometimes twice a day, to discuss the mice problem.
“People are fatigued from dealing with the mice,” Henry said.
Australia’s Victoria state to return to lockdown
The city that was once Australia’s worst COVID-19 hot spot on Thursday announced a seven-day lockdown, its fourth since the pandemic began.
The lockdown for Melbourne and the rest of Victoria state comes after a new cluster in the city rose to 26 infections, including a person who was in intensive care.
Victoria Acting Premier James Merlino said: “Unless something changes, this will be increasingly uncontrollable.”
The new Melbourne cluster was found after a traveler from India became infected with a more contagious variant of the virus while in hotel quarantine in South Australia state earlier this month. The traveler was not diagnosed until he returned home to Melbourne.
Read:Australia won’t buy J&J coronavirus vaccine
Australia’s second largest city last year underwent a second wave of infections that peaked at 725 new cases in a single August day at a time when community spread had been virtually eliminated elsewhere in the country.
That lockdown lasted for 111 days. A third lockdown that lasted for five days in February was triggered by a cluster of 13 cases linked to hotel quarantine near Melbourne Airport.
Victoria accounts for 820 of Australia’s 910 coronavirus deaths during the pandemic.
111-year-old Australian recommends eating chicken brains
Australia’s oldest-ever man has included eating chicken brains among his secrets to living more than 111 years.
Retired cattle rancher Dexter Kruger on Monday marked 124 days since he turned 111, a day older than World War I veteran Jack Lockett was when he died in 2002.
Kruger told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview at his nursing home in the rural Queensland state town of Roma days before the milestone that a weekly poultry delicacy had contributed to his longevity.
“Chicken brains. You know, chickens have a head. And in there, there’s a brain. And they are delicious little things,” Kruger said. “There’s only one little bite.”
Read:Australia won’t buy J&J coronavirus vaccine
Kruger’s 74-year-old son Greg credits his father’s simple Outback lifestyle for his long life.
Nursing home manger Melanie Calvert said Kruger, who is writing his autobiography, was “probably one of the sharpest residents here.”
“His memory is amazing for a 111-year-old,” Calvert said.
John Taylor, a founder of The Australian Book of Records, confirmed that Kruger had become the oldest-ever Australian man.
The oldest-ever verified Australian was Christina Cook, who died in 2002 aged 114 years and 148 days.
Australia won’t buy J&J coronavirus vaccine
The Australian government has decided against buying the single-dose Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine as a way to accelerate its immunization program.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said Tuesday the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is similar to the AstraZeneca product, which Australia already contracted to buy.
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Australia had planned to rely on Australian-manufactured AstraZeneca with the goal of delivering at least one dose of vaccine to all eligible adults among a population of 26 million by October. But the government announced last week that the Pfizer vaccine is now the preferred option for people under 50 because of a potential health risk from AstraZeneca.
Australia has doubled its Pfizer order to 40 million doses. Australia had acquired 3.7 doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines by Monday and had injected 1.2 million doses.
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