Cyclone Yasi - Gone in a flash(-flood)

Cyclone Yasi has gone but not before dumping oceans of rain over the southern side Australia, causing flooding in towns across the state of Victoria including Melbourne. Many homes, businesses and cars were flooded but fortunately not on a scale of what we experienced in Queensland.

 Flooding from McIvor Creek in Heathcote, Victoria. Picture: Darren Crees. Source: Herald Sun

At our apartment building, the lift was finally fixed on Friday so I was able to move the remaining appliances down to our new apartment and we could move in and unpack on the weekend.

The building managers are now getting quotes for redoing all the interior that was damaged by the river flooding. All the drywalls and doors on the first and second levels need to be replaced.

The foyer of our apartment building. Note the water level marks on the windows a metre high on the second level.

One of the good things that came out of this was that I was got tickets to see Sting's "Symphonicities" concert as thanks for the work I did at Volunteering Queensland. It was held at the River Stage last night - An open air venue in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens. The concert features Sting singing/playing with Australian-born singer Jo Lawry and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (or a symphony orchestra of the country he's in). The weather was perfect and the concert was fantastic. If this show is coming to your city it's really worth going to see.

Cyclone Yasi - Deaths: 0. Births: 3

Well the strongest part of Cyclone Yasi has come and gone, though it is still due to hit Mt Isa (which is not is not a "Cyclone hardened" town) as a force 1 cyclone around about now. And so far there are no reports of deaths or injury, but 3 children were born during the storm - One of them in an evacuation centre.

There was a lot of property damage in the centre of the area it hit with hundreds of homes destroyed or very badly damaged, roofs ripped off, boats piled on top of each other, cars crushed by fallen trees, and tree trunks, branches and foliage everywhere. Fortunately the speed at which the cyclone was moving reduced a bit just before it hit which meant that arrived a bit after high tide, and because of that the storm surge wasn't as high as initially predicted. It also seemed to help that the buildings that were built in the past few years to new specifications (and those that survived Cyclone Larry in 2006) withstood the battering well, and the big towns of Cairns and Townsville survived pretty well.

Over 170,000 homes lost power but the main electricity transmission line held up.

 Hinchinbrook Marina in Cardwell
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Here is a selection of photos showing the results of the cyclone.

Imagine winds of 300km/h

Cyclone Yasi has developed into a category 5 cyclone - The highest category. This means that it will have gusts of around 300km/h or more. See here for more on cyclone categories.

Yasi is now beginning to hit the mainland with its centre just south of the town of Innisfail. Innisfail is 1,300km NW of Brisbane and is one of the places we visited last September. The strongest winds occur in the "eyewall" of the cyclone (the part that surrounds the calm eye) but the cyclone will cause storm winds up to 400km each side and will take about 12 hours to pass.We're not directly affected in Brisbane but it's really going to stretch the volunteers and emergency services who are still busy with the flood cleanup. After the cyclone has hit the coast it will weaken as it moves inland, but will still be a category 3 cyclone when it reaches the mining town of Mt Isa, 800km inland of Innisfail. This cyclone really is big. See its size here compared to other continents around the world.

Surprisingly it is not the winds that are the most dangerous element: More deaths occur because the wind pushes up a storm surge of water and the predictions are that this will be 7m above normal high tide at cyclone's centre. A storm surge doesn't rise slowly like the Brisbane river floods did but comes in in powerful waves. Many of the towns along the coast are barely above sea level so there are a lot of homes and businesses that going to be flooded. Tens of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate, though a few people have chosen to stay. As of now (9:30pm) no emergency services will operate or try to rescue anyone until the cyclone has passed as it is too dangerous to go out.

Cyclone Yasi on 2011-02-02 at 19h32 AEST (Queensland time), about to hit the coast

Once again the Queensland government's communication and management has been fantastic. The premier, Anna Bligh, and the police chief give TV news conferences every hour to give the latest information of what's happening, what people must do, and what is expected to happen over the next few days. The Queensland Police service also sends out messages of advice and informatinon on Twitter and Facebook every few minutes. One of the things Anna Bligh warned of is that the main electricity transmission line serving the whole of north Queensland is going to be hit by the cyclone and that may bring down one or more pylons. If it does then the whole of northern Queensland will be without power for some time.

In local news...
With the power on in our apartment building and the lights working at last I was able to move almost everything from our old apartment to the new apartment with the help of a man-with-a-van (though I didn't need his van). It's just the big appliances and couch that will need to wait until the lift is working. Just to add to the current challenges, someone reversed into our car yesterday so that now needs to go into the panel shop.

Lots more news sure to come.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

The good news is that our apartment building had power switched on yesterday. We're hoping that the lift and fire protection services will be repaired today. Now that the lights are on we will be able to see how much cleaning is still left to do. It will be a lot. I'm still discovering storerooms in the building I didn't even know existed that were flooded.

The bad news is that Cyclone Yasi is coming to Queensland. It's big. REALLY BIG!
In 2006 Cyclone Larry hit towns in northern Queensland in the area around Townsville to Cairns, and did hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Yasi is expected to be as strong as Larry but is much, much bigger - 500km across and making a spiral of clouds with a diameter of 2,000km. It will hit the coast tomorrow and it is expected it will have winds in excess of 250km/h, and some models predicting gusts up to 315km/h.

 Satellite view 1 February 2011

All the resorts in the Whitsundays (a long chain of beautiful, tropical, white-sand holiday islands along the coast) have been evacuated. There is some information on Yasi here.

I'll probably be writing more about this...