Glenda no match for Larry
2006-03-31 12:45
Sydney - Communities on Australia's north-west coast were cleaning up on Friday after tropical Cyclone Glenda brought gale-force winds and torrential rain to the isolated and thinly populated Pilbara region 1 500km north of Perth.
Glenda, which had crossed the coast on Thursday as a category-1 cyclone, was downgraded to a category-1 storm as it meandered through inland areas.
Winds that had been recorded at over 250km/h fell away and the risk of flash flooding receded.
In Onslow, the fishing village of 800 people that took the biggest hit from Glenda, remarkably little damage was reported.
"We have some local flooding, we have four trees down, we haven't had power since yesterday," state emergency services officer Karen Reid told national broadcaster ABC from Onslow. "We've had no reports of structural damage so far."
Sixth to hit so far
Glenda missed the mining towns where most of the region's people live.
At Karratha, the nation's biggest export hub, shipments of iron ore and other commodities were resumed. Leading oil and gas producer Woodside also recommenced operations that had been suspended when the cyclone came through.
Glenda was the sixth severe cyclone of Western Australia's November-to-April cyclone season.
Glenda hit less than two weeks after category-5 Cyclone Larry battered the continent's opposite coast.
The Queensland town of Innisfail, home to 8 000 people, recorded the most devastation. Every third house was damaged and the sugar-cane fields and banana plantations that ring the town were flattened.
No one was killed in Queensland's worst-ever tropical cyclone, and there were no serious injuries, but the damage bill from Larry was estimated at well over 1 billion Australian dollars.
- SAPA