Tropical cyclone hits northeastern Australia

CANBERRA - A powerful cyclone ripped roofs of houses and uprooted trees near the tropical city of Cairns in Australia's far northeast yesterday, with winds of up to 290 kph (180 mph) devastating local communities and crops.

The sugar-growing town of Innisfail bore the brunt of Cyclone Larry, which left a trail of destruction along 300 km of coastline, stretching south from Cairns to Townsville.

"It just came across the bay and the place literally shook. It was like the sound of a steam train coming across the bay -- it was terrifying," Cherelle Skelly said from her beach home at Mission Point, near Innisfail.

Prime Minister John Howard put Australia's military on alert to help with rescue operations or to move emergency supplies and medical help to the worst-hit areas.

Wayne Coutts, from Queensland's emergency disaster service, said damage reports were so far limited to flooding, uprooted trees and damage to houses.

"We've even seen a few homes that you might as well say have been totally demolished -- it looked like they'd exploded," Coutts told reporters in Queensland.

Police Sergeant Dwayne Amos in Innisfail, a town of about 8,500 people, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that more than half the houses in the town had sustained some damage. He said injuries were all minor.

The Bureau of Meteorology said Cyclone Larry was similar in size to Cyclone Tracy, which killed 71 people and destroyed about 70 per cent of the northern city of Darwin in 1974.

Cairns is the main tourist centre of north Queensland state, and is a base for visitors to the nearby Great Barrier Reef and inland tropical rainforests.

Up to 250,000 people live in the area, which is also the centre of Australia's banana industry and accounts for 25 per cent of Australia's sugar cane production.

"We are the tropical fruit bowl of Australia. I would say every tree has been flattened," local mayor Neil Clarke told ABC television. "It looks like an atomic bomb has hit the place."

Australia is the third-largest exporter of raw sugar in the world and in some areas the cane crop has been destroyed.

"There will be fairly significant damage to the cane crop ... It's been pretty severe around Innisfail," Alf Cristaudo, chairman of the Canegrowers' organisation, said from Ingham, on the southern edge of the cyclone zone.

Around 90 per cent of banana production was also believed to have been wiped out in the Tully area near Innisfail, the centre of Australian banana production, said Tony Heidrich, chief executive officer of the Australian Banana Growers' Council.

The storm forced thousands of people to take shelter or evacuate low-lying areas because authorities were concerned the cyclone would cause a tidal surge. But the surge did not eventuate and police reported only minor casualties.

Australia's Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre said the cyclone was a maximum category 5 as it neared the coast, but was downgraded to a category 4 as it hit near Innisfail, sending debris flying and cutting power to 50,000 homes.

Meteorologist Joe Courtney said Cyclone Larry had a narrow zone of destructive winds, compared with Hurricane Katrina which devastated the US city of New Orleans last August.

"Katrina was a large, intense hurricane. A lot of the impact from Katrina was from the water caused by the storm surge," Courtney said.

"Here we've got coral reefs and islands, so it changes the nature of the impact," he said, adding that the expected high sea levels did not happen.

Miner BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc. evacuated employees from its nickel refinery in Yabulu, north of the coastal town of Townsville, late Sunday, but reopened yesterday after the storm passed. There were no reports of damage, a spokeswoman said.

Mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd./ Plc. said its aluminium and alumina-making operations were unaffected.

Cyclone Tracy in 1974 caused insured losses of A$837 million in today's dollars, the third largest insured loss from a natural disaster in Australia. A 45-minute hailstorm in Sydney in 1999 caused the biggest insured loss of about A$2 billion.

- REUTERS