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TWO POWERFUL CYCLONES pounded Australia and left a trail of destruction with houses ripped apart, trees uprooted and power lines torn down.
Electricity was cut to thousands of people as Tropical Cyclone Marcia, a category five storm, slammed into the Queensland coast just after 10pm Irish-time last night.
It has since weakened to a category two storm.
Marcia happened just hours after after Cyclone Lam hit further north.
The category four Lam caused extensive damage to remote Aboriginal communities near Elcho Island, some 500 km east of Northern Territory capital Darwin.
“Initial indications are that there has been substantial damage, initial reports are the airstrip is still intact but covered with debris,” regional police commander Bruce Porter said of the Elcho Island community, which was without power and water.
“There are downed power lines. There are a number of trees down and many roads are impassable and we do have a number of buildings and houses that have been severely damaged.”
He added that reports suggested structural damage in Milingimbi and Ramingining but Gapuwiyak appeared to have escaped the worst. There were no reports of major injuries.
Further south, howling winds and torrential rain had residents hunkering down to wait out the terrifying conditions whipped up by Marcia. Authorities warned of a “calamity” although there were no early casualties.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said there had been “significant damage” in the towns of Yeppoon and Rockhampton, which was still being assessed, with her biggest concern the number of power lines brought down.
“This poses a significant risk to people,” she said.
The storm landed near Shoalwater Bay, a town of 16,000 people some 670km north of Brisbane. It has since been downgraded to a category three.
Officials forecast Yeppoon to bear the brunt of the storm’s eye but Palaszczuk said it only “grazed” the town en route south towards the much bigger Rockhampton, home to some 80,000 people.
Despite this, there was extensive damage to property in Yeppoon with roofs torn off and some homes virtually destroyed, and more than 30,000 people left without power in the region.
“I don’t care about the house whatsoever — our family’s here so we can start again,” Simone O’Leary told reporters from an evacuation centre in the town.
“We’re all safe and that’s all that matters.”
Images posted to national broadcaster ABC’s website showed what appeared to be the remains of small homes which had crumbled into the ocean as big seas eroded the beach on Great Keppel Island, off Yeppoon.
“Three houses have gone into the ocean,” island resident Margaret Gearin told the ABC.
Massive seas
Roiling seas, a deluge of rain, and gusts of up to 295 km/h were experienced along the central Queensland coast with a storm surge predicted to raise sea levels three metres 10 feet higher than normal.
The storm was weakening as it headed south but still packing a powerful punch with the impact being felt over a wide area with power lines and trees down across Rockhampton, local officials said.
Residents as far away as Brisbane sandbagged their homes and cleared yards of objects that could be whipped away by the wind, while Australia’s Channel Nine network showed images of a shark washed ashore by the waves.
Dozens of schools were closed and businesses shuttered as a series of domestic flights were cancelled.
“We’ve got trees all around us and it sounds like jumbo jets flying all around the top of us. All the trees are starting to fall over,” said a caller to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said it was a “desperate situation” and warned “this is going to be a calamity, no doubt about that” ahead of Marcia making landfall.
Queensland has been smashed by several major storms and cyclones over the past few years with Cyclone Oswald, also a category five, flooding parts of the state in 2013.
© – AFP 2015
Isnt god wonderful….
No….The universe is wonderful.
Your obviously more religous than scientific otherwise you would know your so called God did not create the Universe. Or this World for that matter.
I think there was a slight hint of sarcasm in James’s comment which you all missed
Nice work putting the caption over the actual object in the image…
Erhhhhhh…….they didn’t. Its above the word “at” in the caption right on the edge of the outer ring.
Infinitesmily grand!
Is that we’re the little bo***x Fitzpatrick comes from????
The world is flat, one god created all this and we don’t know who created him/her/it?
I’ve got your ring and new moon right here.
God
Invisible pink unicorn
SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE UNIVERSE CANNOT BE ETERNAL because it could not have sustained itself eternally due to the law of entropy (increasing net energy decay, even in an open system). Einstein showed that space, matter, and time all are physical and all had a beginning. Space even produces particles because it’s actually something, not nothing. Even time had a beginning! Time is not eternal.
The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.
Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing. What about the Higgs boson (the so-called “God Particle”)? The Higgs boson does not create mass from nothing, but rather it converts energy into mass. Einstein showed that all matter is some form of energy.
The supernatural cannot be proved by science but science points to a supernatural intelligence and power for the origin and order of the universe. Where did God come from? Obviously, unlike the universe, God’s nature doesn’t require a beginning.
EXPLAINING HOW AN AIRPLANE WORKS doesn’t mean no one made the airplane. Explaining how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Maker behind them. Natural laws may explain how the order in the universe works and operates, but mere undirected natural laws cannot explain the origin of that order. Once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.
WHAT IS SCIENCE? Science simply is knowledge based on observation. No one observed the universe coming by chance or by design, by creation or by evolution. These are positions of faith. The issue is which faith the scientific evidence best supports.
Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”
An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.
If you discovered a romantic letter or message written in the sand, you don’t have to experiment to know that it was by design and not because a stick randomly carried by wind put it there. You naturally assume that an intelligent and rational being was responsible.
I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles: NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION and HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM
Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION
Babu G. Ranganathan*
(B.A. Bible/Biology)
Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS
*I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.
Wake me up when you’ve finished the lecture. Time and place. This is neither.
There’s a spacecraft leaving tomorrow for it be on it the lot of you
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