TROPICAL CYCLONE Yasi has left thousands homeless, destroyed crops and disrupted mining in Queensland as it swept across Australia bound for the Northern Territory.
Those in the path of the cyclone, one of the most violent storms to strike the mainland in a century, spent a terrifying night on Wednesday sheltering from its effects. The winds approached 300km/h and it dumped more than 500mm (20in) of rain.
Houses were demolished, trees toppled, power was cut to 180,000 homes and debris was strewn across a wide stretch of Queensland’s coastline near Mission Beach, which bore the brunt of Yasi when it made landfall overnight. The marina at Port Hinchinbrook resembled a junk yard with dozens of yachts and boats piled on top of one another.
Emergency services minister Neil Roberts said initial assessments were that more than 280 houses were damaged in the three hardest-hit towns, and crews were unable to reach at least four others, so the tally would rise.
Officials had issued days of increasingly dire warnings, and said lives were spared because people followed instructions to flee to evacuation centres or bunker themselves at home in dozens of cities and towns in Cyclone Yasi’s path.
Queensland premier Anna Bligh said the destruction from the cyclone was severe but not catastrophic. No deaths or serious injuries have been recorded, but two men remain missing.
“It’s been remarkable to me as I drive through and see the size of trees that were brought down in this event that we don’t have massive structural damage,” she said, adding that the storm remained dangerous even as it weakened and moved further into the interior.
As the extremely high rainfall across large parts of northeast Queensland continues, with a further 200mm expected in some centres in the next 24 hours, additional pressure will be placed on the state’s bloated river systems.
Stephen Roberts, Sydney-based economist at Nomura, said the cyclone could cut Australia’s gross domestic product by about Aus$2 billion (€1.5 billion) or 0.6 per cent in the opening three months of 2011. But the damage bill would be “considerably higher”. Before heading to the worst-hit communities, Australian prime minister Julia Gillard said the hole in the nation’s budget caused by the cyclone’s repair bill would be met by spending cuts.
There would be no increase in the so-called flood tax announced last month.
Yasi comes on the heels of months of devastating floods in the nation’s eastern states, particularly Queensland, that killed at least 35 people, ruined crops and shut down the mining industry.
The National Farmers’ Federation said the bulk of the banana crop in Innisfail and Tully, accounting for close to 85 per cent of the state’s Aus$400 million industry, had been wiped out.
Ahead of the cyclone hitting land, concerns about the storm had helped push sugar prices to a 30-year high in New York. Australia is the world’s third-largest sugar exporter and the majority of this comes from Queensland.
The regional capital of Cairns, gateway to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, escaped the worst of the storm and suffered little damage.
Rail networks were returning to normal yesterday with services to Hay Point harbour reopening and others preparing to resume today. The state’s tourism industry also said most of its businesses in centres including Cairns would resume operations within days.
The hardest hit communities were centred on Innisfail, Tully, Mission Beach and Cardwell. In Tully, an estimated one-in-three houses lost their roofs or were destroyed. Yasi has been downgraded from a most severe category five storm to a category one. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)