Cyclone Debbie’s full wrath is revealed
AUTHORITIES will use military and private helicopters to evacuate people from Daydream and Hamilton islands, after they were smashed by Cyclone Debbie.
RESIDENTS of Daydream and Hamilton Islands are bracing for evacuation as devastated communities find themselves without fresh water in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie.
One local told news.com.au reporter Emma Reynolds he’s “worried people could start trying to steal electricity from generators if they get really desperate”.
A woman reported missing after last being seen standing on the roof of her car in floodwaters on the Bruce Highway near Proserpine late on Tuesday was found safe early yesterday morning, The Courier-Mail reports.
According to The Courier Mail, authorities will use military and private helicopters to evacuate people from Daydream and Hamilton islands.
Emergency workers had also rescued three people stranded on the roof of another car caught in floodwaters in Sarina.
Attempts to evacuate Daydream Island by ferry were thwarted after the island’s jetty was destroyed by the cyclone.
According to the Daily Mercury, drinking water is running so low hotel guests have been given just one bottle of water each.
Acting Chief of Operations, Major General Stuart Smith, said the Australian Defence Force has committed around 1200 personnel to the clean up operation and to rescue those stranded.
Major General Smith said tasks will include “evacuation, aeromedical transport and search and rescue”.
“Our emergency teams are trying to get into those communities, we have been since first light,” QFES’s Mark Roche told Sky News Australia.
“The reality is this is still a significant event. There’s still a lot of rain, a lot of wind. It is hampering our effects, our ability to get in there.
“We expect this rain event to continue for a very long time.”
Cyclone Debbie is the largest to hit the region since Cyclone Yasi in 2014 and could cost hundreds of millions in lost tourism revenue, insurance and clean-up.
Queensland Tourism Industry Council boss Daniel Gschwind said Hamilton Island and the Whitsundays generated about $700 million a year for the region.
There goes the warf and dock! #cyclonedebbie #whitessundays #australia #daydreamisland pic.twitter.com/VMcJ8bz6i7
— Arjuna George (@AJGeorgefire) March 29, 2017
The situation is no better on Airlie Beach, where some tourists haven’t eaten in 24-hours.
“I just want to go home,” distraught Melbourne woman Karina Calle, who was in Queensland for a holiday, told Channel Seven’s Sunrise.
“I came up with mum from Melbourne to have just some time away, we weren’t expecting this.”
“I’m trying to get some food and water at the moment, we’ve got nothing.”
Ms Calle’s fiance Travis Coutts told news.com.au that his future wife had been looking forward to spending some time with her mum ahead of their wedding on April 23.
Instead of a relaxing holiday, mother and daughter had to barricade themselves in a bathroom, pushing mattresses up against the windows of their hotel room, to wait out the worst of the storm, without power or airconditioning.
Mr Coutts said the couple had been ringing each other hourly and he felt helpless being so far away.
“They were petrified, it was a harrowing experience,” he said.
Damage at Hamilton Island. Video credit: Cameron Wright. Latest: https://t.co/Y9EvGp1eUM #TCDebbie #7News pic.twitter.com/RER4IwTKAV
— 7 News Queensland (@7NewsQueensland) March 29, 2017
He said mother and daughter flew in to Airlie Beach on Saturday and were told the resort was on high ground and they were safe. But they didn’t realise how bad the storm, which started just after 1pm yesterday and was still going seven hours later, would be.
Originally due to leave today, mother and daughter now won’t be able to fly out until Friday, which is the first available flight they could get.
“It’s been a tough couple of days,” Mr Coutts said. “I just want her home and to look after her.”
Airlie Beach resident Steve Andrew, 56, said he had already lost his business to Cyclone Ului in 2010 and now his home had been torn apart by Cyclone Debbie.
“This place is unliveable. I’ve got water pouring into the living room like a waterfall,” he told the Whitsunday Times.
He said the violent second half of the cyclone was among the “scariest” moments of his life.
“I’ve never been scared like that before.
“You’ve got to give Mother Nature full respect in a storm like that, the sheer ferocity of it.
“It’s still here and it’s still sh***ing on us.
“It just looks like a bomb has hit this place.”
Another local Dave Thompson, works at a caretaker at a motel in Airlie Beach, which was so badly damaged it will likely have to be demolished. He said “I think I’ll probably pack up and go now, that’s enough”.
Mr Thompson has lived in Airlie Beach for 18 years and has seen some pretty bad storms but “this one took the cake”.
He said he narrowly avoided being injured when the whole back of the building fell away.
“I was in room nine but the windows came in and that was it,” he said. “Lucky I moved when I did because the whole back of the building came off anyway.
But the community spirit has kicked in, with Down Under Bar putting on a BBQ lunch on Wednesday and was serving free beers and sandwiches to the 50 people stranded there. Little Vegas burgers had a queue down the street for hot food.
While Cyclone Debbie has been downgraded to a tropical low, the lingering weather system continues to cause heavy rain and high winds to the region.
The difficult conditions are hampering efforts to get food, water and other assistance to areas impacted by the cyclone.
Heavy rain was also causing flash flooding in Mackay on Wednesday, where rainfall reached 100mm per hour, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
“In the Pioneer Basin there’s been over 1000mm of rain in 48 hours. We normally see 1500-2000mm in a year,” BOM Queensland Hydrology Manager Victoria Dodds said.
Authorities have released water from Somerset Dam, northwest of Brisbane ahead of predicted downpours from the remnants of the cyclone.
The weather system will likely impact residents as far south as Sydney on Thursday with cooler temperatures and rain expected.
More than 63,000 homes are without power, including in Mackay, Sarina, Airlie Beach and Proserpine and people stranded in the region have been told to expect more heavy rain and power shortages for days.
Pioneer river nearly touching bottom of forgan bridge at #Mackay after #CycloneDebbie pic.twitter.com/0WbTqg0nZW
— Emily Smith (@Emily_SmithDM) March 29, 2017
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said there was a lot of structural damage across the Whitsundays and the government was prioritising getting water to Daydream Island, where about 200 holiday-makers and 100 staff were running out.
“It’s f***ed,” Welsh tourist Tom Humphries told news.com.au at Airlie Beach.
“There was loads of wind, trees falling down and windows blown out in the next room and we’ve got no food left. It’s a bit of a nightmare. We’re getting cabin fever. It seems we’re stuck here for a few days at least.
“I’m sure it’s a beautiful place but for now I’m completely over it.”
Charlotte Jenkins, who works at an Airlie Beach tour operator, told news.com.au she had spoken to several angry tourists.
“I do think airports should probably have told people,” she said.
Airlie Beach bars and hostels hit by trees, roofs caved in, tiles littering ground #TCDebbie #CycloneDebbie @newscomauHQ pic.twitter.com/c1fiq1Gn7E
— Emma Reynolds (@emmareyn) March 28, 2017
“They seem quite angry but they didn’t take the advice, which was to leave. They’re expecting responsibility to be taken by somebody else. Look at the weather, where you’re going.
“Some people were saying on Saturday they’d been told to go north, which is the worst idea. They were saying ‘we’ve got to get up there for a tour’, I said ‘this is more important’.”
Tourists who have missed flights and buses are desperate to make new travel plans.
George, a Romanian living on the Gold Coast, said he was desperate to get out and was going to pay someone $100 to drive him “anywhere” until he realised the routes were flooded.
“The roads are all blocked,” he said as he sat outside a closed McDonald’s. “I’ll just wait here.”
Many tourists had missed flights and buses and were wondering what came next, with little information available and most phones not working. Some had found operating pay phones instead.
People are wandering the streets at a loss for what to do.
Tom Siberg, 22, from England is one of the tourists stranded in Airlie Beach.
“We got evacuated from a hostel down here and had to go to one higher up,” he told news.com.au.
“We had the Whitsundays booked for Monday but obviously that’s been postponed. We’ve had to stay an extra day and we couldn’t pay for last night because the card machine wasn’t working.”
His friend Tom Cook-Neill added: “We don’t know how we’re going to get out. All the buses are going to be booked out.”
Simon Myrevik, 21, from Finland, told news.com.au: “I’ve been here since Thursday and I just wanted to leave as soon as possible but I don’t know when that is. Our bus was meant to be yesterday and we were planning to go to Magnetic Island on Friday.”
Juliette DuPont, 18, said she and her friend from Belgium has been stuck in a hostel for days. “We put a mattress on the windows, one window wouldn’t close.
“There is a bus driver who was with us and he said we can probably leave on Friday when the train starts and go to Townsville. We were supposed to leave this morning.”
Eloise Haulotte, 19, added: “We just want electricity and a shower.”
The Night Owl store with a generator has said it is about to open, a bakery is going to be selling bacon and eggs rolls and an IGA is expected to open later.
News.com.au reporter Emma Reynolds was in Airlie Beach overnight and said people woke up to scenes of devastation this morning, with boats washed up on the beach, trees smashed through roofs and windows shattered throughout the area.
The area’s once-beautiful lagoon was filled with uprooted trees, and locals and business owners are starting to count the cost, with lights dangling from electrical wires and roads blocked with debris.
Ms Jenkins said she saw roofs flying off neighbour’s buildings, her own fence blew down and trees were uprooted in her garden.
“It was so frustrating it took so long. It was the longest cyclone I’ve ever been in. I’ve always been on the edge but to be right in it was terrifying,” she said.
“The noise of the wind, I couldn’t see that much but what I could see was pretty scary.”
The cyclone has left behind flooded roads littered with trees, and cars that seem to have been abandoned.
“These are typical rural Queensland roads. They couldn’t get emergency services and SES out last night. If you hurt yourself you’ve got no one to come and help you, or you’re risking their life to do it,” she said.
At least one business has also been looted.
“There was looting at a local bar,” she said. “The manager had boarded up broken windows and they’d gone in there and stolen alcohol.
“They’re sending in the army so I’m not too worried.”
The Whitsunday Islands as well as Bowen, Proserpine and the inland town of Collinsville were some of the areas hardest hit by the cyclone.
As daylight started to break Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk questioned whether homes in the region could sustain eight hours of “horrendous force”.
At a later press conference she said a lot of families would wake up this morning and be “shell-shocked” by the devastation.
“For many people this morning, they are waking up and they are seeing the devastation that has happened in their communities. Our hearts go out to them,” she told reporters on Wednesday.
“There would be nothing more tragic than waking up and seeing walls that have come in from your houses, roofs that have gone off, and debris that is lying across your roads.”
The premier said the priority was clearing roads into hard hit communities in the Whitsunday region, getting emergency supplies in, and restoring power and communication lines.
She said power outages had made some food supplies in supermarkets unsafe to eat, and the government would be sending more supplies into communities.
“We’ve already seen some significant structural damage ... a lot of structural damage across that Whitsunday region,” she said.
Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said up to half of the power network was out, and the premier warned it could take up to a week to restore supplies.
“People could be without power even up to a week or over a week. Some places will be able to be restored quickly. We do not know that at this stage until we get the assessments in,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Road cuts are hampering efforts to fix the power network. The Bruce Highway is cut in three places, just north of Bowen, at Airlie Beach and also south of Mackay.
“In some places you have large trees wrapped up in live wires,” Roads, Energy and Water Minister Mark Bailey said.
Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the damage was focused on the Whitsunday region, and the communities of Bowen, Airlie Beach, Proserpine, and the inland town of Collinsville.
“Those areas and the Whitsunday Islands remain difficult for us to contact and to get into,” he said.
“We’re progressively getting information out of there (and) I’m pleased to say the information that we’re getting is while there are significant damage there are no injured people.”
RAIN AND WIND EXPECTED TO CONTINUE
A Bureau of Metrology spokesman said heavy rainfall was expected to continue until Friday, and severe weather warnings have been issued for parts of central Queensland. There is a flood threat extending across 1300km of the Queensland coast.
Ex-tropical Cyclone Debbie was downgraded to a tropical low overnight at 3am AEST as it weakened while moving southwest, but rain of between 150 and 250mm is expected to continue throughout the region.
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned it will bring falls of up to 250mm on Thursday night and Friday morning to the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast. Wind gusts of up to 120km/h are also expected.
The Premier repeated her appeal for people to stay off roads, as emergency response teams try to get in, and ahead of more heavy rain and bad weather caused by the former cyclone.
Bad weather is expected to hit the southeast corner on Thursday and Friday, before the rain depression that was cyclone Debbie moves offshore.
“If you do not have to be on the roads until Friday, please stay off the roads. It will be some dangerous conditions and I do want all Queenslanders to be safe,” the Premier said.
Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Commissioner Katarina Carroll begged people not to cross flooded roads.
She said emergency officers had already been forced to put themselves in danger to rescue one person from a vehicle in flood waters at Proserpine, and another similar rescue is underway in Mackay.
Ms Carroll said help was being called in from NSW, to speed up damage assessments.
“At this stage we have got well over 800 SES requests. That will increase dramatically when power comes back and communications come back, and people start moving to their houses. Please be patient with us — we will get to you.”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited the Crisis Coordination Centre in Canberra on Wednesday for a briefing from the director general of emergency management.
“There are well over a thousand emergency personnel and defence personnel literally ready to go in today,” he said.
CYCLONE’S AFTERMATH
Boatmen and women looked on in disbelief on Wednesday morning as they surveyed the damage at Shute Harbour at Airlie Beach, the country’s second biggest ferry terminal and gateway to the Whitsundays.
Piers have been destroyed and pushed up onto the bank, while sails attached to the main building have been torn to shreds.
The storm even looked massive from space, with NASA capturing the extreme weather system from the International Space Station.
.@NASANPP provided this look of Tropical Cyclone Debbie as it made landfall in Queensland bringing heavy rainfall: https://t.co/PKLkMW7TMI pic.twitter.com/Ya5p0LLlj2
— NASA (@NASA) March 28, 2017
Boat owner James Wighton says he’s never seen such “devastation”. “This is millions of dollars worth of infrastructure,” he told AAP.
Whitsunday Mayor Andrew Wilcox warned residents and business owners to prepare for devastation.
“It looked like a war zone, actually,” he said of Bowen’s main street.
PREMIER SLAMS IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOUR
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has warned residents to brace for “shock and awe” as the damage from Cyclone Debbie becomes apparent, and slammed the “appalling” behaviour of those who risked their lives surfing and driving in the cyclone’s wake.
“I cannot believe this sort of behaviour,” she told ABC news. “To go out there in the treacherous surf is simply irresponsible.”
The Premier said foolish locals had endangered themselves and others.
“Honestly, why do you want to put your own life at risk and put the lives of others at risk?” she said.
BABY BORN DURING STORM
The Premier has also revealed some good news amid the devastation, revealing a baby girl named Billiana had been safely delivered in the Whitsundays in the early hours of Wednesday morning during the storm.
“You know, out of all of this, to see a little miracle, I think brings a smile to a lot of faces,” she said, thanking the doctor and ambulance officers who had assisted with the birth at Cannonvale.
How good is this! Welcome to the world baby girl, QAS paramedics with mum, dad and bub #Cannonvale. pic.twitter.com/5u0fmylGly
— Queensland Ambulance (@QldAmbulance) March 28, 2017
WEDDING CANCELLED AMID CHAOS
A couple who were forced to cancel their Hamilton Island wedding yesterday have described what was supposed to be their big day as “unforgettable” for all the wrong reasons.
Amy Murphy and Damian Hall told Nine’s Today they had waited for the storm to pass “with great difficulty”.
“It wasn’t like you’re waiting for a train. It was very distracting, so every sound was — it was like it was magnified,” Ms Murphy said.
The couple is hoping to reschedule their nuptials to Saturday, depending on the state of the Hamilton Island chapel and yacht club where they planned to hold their reception.
#CycloneDebbie is now a tropical low, though the situation remains very hazardous. Severe Weather Warning: https://t.co/MyZfmJPj3g pic.twitter.com/FdRYfpOOrR
— BOM Queensland (@BOM_Qld) March 28, 2017
TWO SAILORS RESCUED
Queensland Police have confirmed they have rescued two fishermen who were caught in the storm on board a vessel that ran aground on rocks near Whitsunday Island on Tuesday night.
The pair were reported missing after they were able to email family in New South Wales who contacted police.
RESIDENTS WAKE UP TO DEVASTATION
Emergency services had been pre-deployed to the region in anticipation of the devastation, but many were unable to respond during the storm itself.
Winds of more than 260km/hour have battered buildings, coastline and vegetation across the state for the late 24 hours. Advice was for residents to simply “bunker down” for the night, staying safe and clear of windows.
Many people remain without power however many have taken to social media to document the destruction, showing backyards strewn with trees, windows blown out and resorts shattered by the force of the Cyclone.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Deputy Commissioner Mike Wassing says there is significant structural damage in Airlie Beach and Proserpine which bore the brunt of Cyclone Debbie’s 260km/h winds.
Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said the slow pace of the storm — which was travelling at a walking speed of six kilometres per hour — had created a “battering ram effect” as it ploughed across the state.
“We are going to get lots of reports of damage, and sadly I think we will also receive reports of injuries, if not death,” he said.
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Debbie hit the tiny town of Collinsville on Tuesday night, with the 1500 residents told there was “no time to move” ahead of the disaster.
The small Queensland town has lost “a roof off the pub and a couple of roofs”, Ms Palaszczuk said.
— With AAP
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