Name: Flash floods devastate coastal holiday parks in Victoria
Uploaded: 2026-01-16T06:14:37.121Z
Duration: 2 min 46 s
Description: A major clean-up is underway at a popular tourist hotspot in Victoria after a storm smashed the region. Holidaymakers ran for their lives when torrential rain caused a river to burst its banks, flooding campsites and dragging vehicles out to sea.

A major clean-up is underway at a popular tourist hotspot in Victoria after a storm smashed the region. Holidaymakers ran for their lives when torrential rain caused a river to burst its banks, flooding campsites and dragging vehicles out to sea.

Victoria

Flash floods swept through coastal holiday destinations in Victoria, Australia, causing significant destruction to vacation parks and leaving up to 600 people affected. Emergency services rescued a man in his 60s and airlifted a child to hospital, while many holidaymakers lost all their belongings as floodwaters rose rapidly.

The flooding, triggered by up to 186 millimetres of rain in just six hours, led to chaotic scenes as people sought shelter and searched for missing family members. Authorities and community members are now focused on cleanup and recovery, with experts emphasizing the need for investment in climate-resilient infrastructure to prepare for more frequent extreme weather events.

Flash floods devastate coastal holiday parks in Victoria

Coastal holiday carnage. Vacation sanctuaries disintegrate in just seconds. Holiday makers in Cumberland River helpless as flash floods take hold. One man in his 60s had to be winched to safety by police. Emergency services say a child was airlifted to hospital after being hurt. Officers going car to car to check if anyone was inside them. Vehicles bobbed like corks in the raging rivers. Up to 600 people were affected by the floods, which hit quickly. Some couldn't get back in time to save anything. All the kids' clothes, my son's favourite teddy bear, pillows, doonas, like we've just got nothing. It's all, we don't know. We just don't know. Campers thankful the storm hit during the day. If that happened when we were all sleeping, we had so many kids sleeping in swags and they wouldn't be here right now. It came up that far. So I think it's the what-ifs that really, like, get you. Why river also copped the flood's fury. Surges flowing through the Big Four Caravan Park. A tsunami. It was just like full of rubbish tents, caravans, beds, eskies, gas bottles. Many took refuge at the pub. It was chaotic. It was scary at first. Like, you know, lots of people didn't know what was going on. There was like people missing family members, everyone trying to yell across everybody. In Lawn, the Erskine River burst, flooding one of the caravan parks on its banks. It was panicking, rushing. Like, everyone's out here, like, talking about it. Like, people crying and you walk up the street and people are like, what's going on? What's going on? 200 people attended the relief centre set up in Lawn, but most of them slept in accommodation that was offered up. The wreckage left behind on the surf coast. Extraordinary. Cars parked on the beach. Their owners left to search through the mud and the sludge. The Lawn Foreshore Caravan Park couldn't let people back in for a long time today. Worried about electrical and biological hazards. This clean-up job is a tough one. The scale of debris left behind by the flooding is huge. Right now, this excavator is breaking down trees wedged under bridges into smaller pieces to make clearing them easier and safer. Up to 186 mils of rain was recorded in the region yesterday, most of it in just six hours. This was an extraordinary event in terms of the amount of rainfall that fell in a very short time period. The local community now left to pick up the pieces and see if there's anything it can do to stop the damage if it happens again. Extreme weather events are going to be more frequent and more intense, and that we need investment to make sure that our infrastructure is climate resilient, that our communities are prepared. Rory Campbell, 10 News.

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