Gold Coast (Australia) (AFP) – Torrential rain from the remnants of Cyclone Alfred flooded swathes of Australia’s east coast on Monday, as workers battled to restore power to more than 190,000 homes and businesses.

The weather system, which made landfall on Saturday, has battered a 400-kilometre (250-mile) stretch of coast for five days, claiming one life when a driver was swept off a bridge Friday.

Even as the wind and rain eased, authorities issued a string of flood and severe weather warnings across the region, which straddles Queensland and New South Wales.

The tropical depression dumped 30 centimetres (one foot) of rain in 24 hours over parts of Queensland’s capital city of Brisbane, the bureau of meteorology said.

Heavy rainfall, flash flooding and moderate-to-major river flooding remained a risk, bureau of meteorology forecaster Jonathan How said.

“This is all due to the remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred,” he told AFP.

“It did cross the southeast Queensland coast on Saturday, but it has been very slow moving even as it moved over land. And, quite importantly, it is still dragging a lot of moisture.”

Utility companies said more than 185,000 homes and businesses were still blacked out in Queensland, and another 10,000 in New South Wales.

In New South Wales, “helicopters are being used where possible to survey remote areas of the network to help identify the damage”, a spokesperson for Essential Energy said.

The wild weather has so far claimed at least one life, after a 61-year-old man’s four-wheel-drive pickup was swept off a bridge Friday in northern New South Wales.