Wild weather leaves mass blackouts in Australia

Sydney –

Wild weather has blacked out more than 300,000 homes and businesses on Australia’s east coast, officials said Sunday, with one driver confirmed dead and a dozen troops injured.

After days hovering off the coast as a category 2 tropical cyclone generating heavy weather across the region, Alfred weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall on Saturday evening.

Strong gusts and heavy rain have brought down power lines and sparked flood warnings on swollen rivers along a 400-kilometer (250-mile) stretch of the coast straddling southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales.