QLD:Yasi: Five reasons to be very worried

AAP General News (Australia)
02-01-2011
QLD:Yasi: Five reasons to be very worried

By Doug Conway, AAP Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, Feb 1 AAP - Queenslanders have five distressing reasons to worry more about
Cyclone Yasi than they did about the devastating Cyclone Larry five years ago.

Yasi is much larger, is heading for more heavily populated areas, is likely to be even
more ferocious, may not be the last cyclone of the current weather system and threatens
a state already reeling from killer floods.

Larry was bad enough.

It was rated the most powerful cyclone to hit Queensland in almost a century when it
smashed Innisfail and surrounding areas in March 2006.

It caused one fatality, damaged 10,000 homes and inflicted losses worth $1.5 billion.

It virtually annihilated Australia's banana crop, leading to severe shortages and price
hikes of up to 500 per cent.

But the latest cyclone to threaten banana-benders looms as even more ominous.

Yasi has built into a severe category four cyclone, and could bring winds approaching
250 km/h, packing a punch 30 or 40 km/h greater than Larry, which was a mid-level category
four.

Yasi is also significantly larger.

It is so big that it could lash the coast with 100 km/h winds on Wednesday even while
still hundreds of kms out to sea, before hitting land around the sugar town of Innisfail
later that night or early on Thursday.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh warned the storm was so large that the calm experienced
as the eye passes could last for more than one hour.

"It's very important people understand that calm is not an opportunity to go walking
outside and to have a look around," she said.

"The next thing that will be felt is the strongest possible winds.

"This storm is huge and it is life threatening."

Yasi's size means it threatens a 700 km stretch of coastline from Cooktown towards
Mackay, an area that is home to more than a quarter of a million people.

It includes Townsville, whose 180,000 residents make it the state's biggest regional
city, as well as Mackay, with a population of 80,000, and smaller but still sizeable centres
like Bowen, Ayr and Innisfail, Ingham, Tully, Proserpine, St Lawrence and Yeppoon.

"Please make no mistake," said Queensland state disaster co-ordinator Ian Stewart.

"This storm is a deadly event."

Premier Bligh has warned the cyclone could be one of the most powerful to hit Australia's
eastern seaboard.

It could trigger a tsunami-style storm surge, she says, especially if its landfall
coincides with a high tide.

It could also bring a further deluge of 1,000mm of rain to the northern and central
regions of a state already hammered by floods which have claimed 40 lives and caused an
estimated $8 billion loss to the coal industry alone.

It has already brought further havoc to the coal industry, forcing all ports between
Cairns and Mackay to close on Tuesday and 50 bulk coal carriers to put out to sea to ride
the storm out.

It could also wreck the state government's plans to privatise the Abbott Point coal
terminal near Bowen, which is on the market for $1.5 billion.

Thousands of residents have heeded government warnings to evacuate, and all schools
in far north Queensland will be closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Nursing homes and resort islands like Daydream and Hamilton began evacuations on Monday,
and a total of 360 hospital patients were being moved, some of them flown to hospitals
in southeast Queensland.

Regardless of what destruction Yasi creates, the state's weather woes may be far from over.

The National Climate Centre has warned the intense La Nina system which is dominating
the Pacific Ocean and causing the current problems could persist well into the second
half of the year.

AAP dc/msk

KEYWORD: YASI (AAP BACKGROUNDER)

� 2011 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.