Rains have flooded communities since Thursday, but parts of the east coast went into crisis on Saturday as a major dam overflowed, adding swollen rivers and causing rapid flooding.
On Monday, the Prime Minister of New South Wales (New South Wales), Gladys Berejiklian, announced that almost 18,000 people had been evacuated from the flood-affected regions of the state and that locals were on social media to show that thousands of animals have also been on the move.
Matt Lovenfosse has posted Facebook updates of his family’s farm in Kinchela Creek, including the photo above.
“All the brown you can see are the spiders trying to beat the flood water,” he wrote in the headline.
Lovenfosse grew up on the farm and told CNN that he experienced similar floods in March 2001 and March 2013. On both occasions the flood waters pushed the spiders toward the house, which is the highest point in the world. the property.
“It’s still raining here and the flood water keeps rising, the water is getting closer to our house,” Lovenfosse said. “In the morning it should be inside and the spiders will be all over the house.”
However, Lovenfosse plans to stay in his two-story home.
“My family has lived here forever, I grew up here and we feel safe here,” he said.
Spiders are not the only animals seeking refuge from the water, Lovenfosse added.
“The trees are full of snakes,” he said. “If you take the boat out over the paddock, they swim towards it trying to get dry, just like with spiders.”
Some may seem like nightmare things, but Lovenfosse has no disturbance.
‘I grew up here on the farm, so I’ve always been around snakes, spiders and all the other animals so they don’t bother me and we don’t usually cross paths too often, but when the flood comes, they have to find a place to dry.’ t, ”he said.
“So many flood water spiders,” he wrote, along with a video of hundreds of arachnids crawling through what looked like garage doors.
“They’ll climb up their legs to take refuge as well,” legend says.
The wet weather will continue and Berejiklian predicts that more people will be able to be evacuated.
“The situation is evolving, heavy rainfall will continue and we are now seeing warnings issued by weather warnings in Illawarra and the south coast,” he said.
“I don’t know of any moment in the history of our state where we had these extreme weather conditions in such rapid succession in the midst of a pandemic,” he added. “So it’s a tough time for New South Wales, but I think we’ve also shown our ability to be resilient.”