CAIRNS, Australia, (Reuters) – Thousands of residents fled their homes and crammed into shelters in northeastern Australia as a cyclone described as the most powerful in the country’s history and with a 650 km (400 mile) wide front barreled toward the coastline yesterday.
“We are facing a storm of catastrophic proportions,” Queensland state premier Anna Bligh said after Cyclone Yasi was upgraded to a maximum-strength category five storm.
More than 400,000 people live in the cyclone’s expected path, which includes the cities of Cairns, Townsville and Mackay. The entire stretch is popular with tourists and includes Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Satellite images showed Yasi as a massive storm system covering an area bigger than Italy or New Zealand, with the cyclone predicted to be the strongest ever to hit Australia.
It is expected to hit the coast on Wednesday evening, packing winds of nearly 300 km (186 miles) per hour.
“All aspects of this cyclone are going to be terrifying and potentially very very damaging,” Bligh said, adding the greatest threat to life could come from surges of water of up to four metres above normal high tide levels along the coast. The storm is due to hit when the tide is high.
Mines, rail lines and coal ports have all shut down, with officials warning the storm could drive inland for hundreds of kilometres, hitting rural and mining areas still struggling to recover after months of devastating floods.
Outside a shuttered night market in the tourist city of Cairns, nervous backpackers tried to flag down cars and reach temporary evacuation centres at a nearby university.
“We are terrified. We have had almost no information and have never seen storms like this,” said Marlim Flagar, 20, from Sweden.
Various buildings in Cairns, including schools and malls, have been designated as shelters for those fleeing the storm, with some fast filling up and several already full, according to messages sent on Twitter to local media.
At a sprawling shopping centre, hundreds of people streamed into a makeshift shelter carrying backpacks, blankets and food.
“We’ve only got a loaf of bread and a few other things, so we hope it doesn’t last too long or we’ll run out,” said local woman Kirsty Munro as she tried to gather her three children aged two, four and eight in the crush of people.
Australia has strict building standards and Queensland suffers regular cyclones, but experts warned that many homes and buildings may not be able to withstand winds of this magnitude.
“The building regulations make things a lot better off at lower wind speeds but once you get to extreme cases you are in uncharted ground,” said Robert Leicester, a researcher at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, who has studied the impact of previous cyclones.
