Hundreds of residents from four remote communities in the Northern Territory are being evacuated due to major flooding in the region.
NT Police Commander Danny Bacon this afternoon said that emergency services were working to relocate as many as 700 people from Kalkarindji, Daguragu and Pigeon Hole, to Darwin via Katherine, as soon as possible.
The evacuation effort has now also been extended to the community of Palumpa.
"The way our planning is going at the moment, we'll have everyone out of that community by tomorrow," Commander Bacon said.
The announcement comes after NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles signed an emergency declaration Wednesday morning covering the communities of Kalkarindji, Daguragu, Pigeon Hole, Palumpa and Yarralin.
In its latest alert, the Bureau of Meteorology warned that major flooding was occurring in the Upper Victoria River at Kalkarindji, as a result of heavy rainfall.
It warned the river was expected to reach at least 17.5 metres later on Thursday, which BOM forecaster Shenagh Gamble said was equal with the record flood level reached in 2001.
She also forecast further falls of between 60 and 160 millimetres throughout the day.
"We cannot rule out the possibility that river height will be higher than 17.5 (metres)," she said.
"Whilst the rainfall has eased, the rain could increase again tonight."
Earlier Wednesday, the Victoria Daly Regional Council confirmed that residents in Daguragu, in the north west of the NT, had been evacuated to the nearby community of Kalkarindji this morning.
Commander Bacon said Daguragu and Pigeon Hole residents had been evacuated to Kalkarindji earlier as a precaution.
Commander Bacon also said 70 of the 700 remote evacuees had been identified as vulnerable by the NT health department, and would be among the first to be transported by helicopter to Katherine.
The remaining community members will be airlifted to Katherine later, then put on buses to Darwin.
He also said that evacuation centres in Katherine and Darwin were well-prepared for the influx of people in need, with both urban centres having taken in flood evacuees previously "on many, many occasions".
However he could not yet say when the residents being evacuated would be able to return home.
"With these flood events, it's a case of assessing the damage and doing a survey of the communities when the water level goes down," he said.
"Depending on the damage that's occurred during the flood event, then that'll give us a bit of a timeline of when people can safely return back to those communities.
"We don't want people returning … when there's no sewerage, no power, no water, and the dwellings are uninhabitable."
A local Kalkarindji resident posted to social media that waters had risen above the local bridge, and said trucks had been unable to resupply the town since Tuesday.
"The Buntine Hwy is currently under about 4.6m of water," he said.
"Houses at Dagaragu (10km away) have the river lapping at their doors now. They’ve been cut off for a few days already.'
The tropical monsoon has over the past few days brought heavy rain to parts of the territory, with the BOM issuing a number of flood alerts and severe weather warnings.
A tropical low over the Daly, Tiwi and Gregory districts has brought widespread falls of between 200 and 300 millimetres in the past week, and wind gusts in excess of 100 kilometres per hour.
