Residents across the Northern Territory’s north have begun cleaning up after Tropical Cyclone Fina swept through the region with destructive winds and torrential rain, cutting power to nearly 19,500 homes and businesses across Darwin and the Tiwi Islands.
Fina arrived as a category 3 system before intensifying to category 4 on Sunday as it tracked south-west towards the northeast Kimberley coast.
With gusts reaching 195km/h, the strongest cyclone to approach Darwin since Tracy in 1974 toppled trees, damaged homes and brought down powerlines, including on Nitsa Kotis’s street, where “a 10m palm tree fell – away from homes – onto power lines, blocking the road and cutting power.”
“I haven’t even been out the back of my place yet to see the damage, I’ve been too busy socialising with the neighbours,” Kotis told The Guardian, as residents spilled onto the street on Sunday morning, some charging devices from car batteries and others sharing stories of a noisy, sleepless night.
Authorities urged people to remain in homes or shelters through Sunday morning before easing restrictions in the afternoon.
Crews continued assessing damage as widespread power and communications outages affected Darwin, Palmerston and coastal areas, with 15 Optus mobile sites offline and Telstra reporting NBN, mobile and landline disruptions likely to last until Tuesday evening.
While emergency services managed the cleanup, long-time locals compared the storm to previous cyclones.
“It probably is the worst since Tracy,” said Kent Pedersen, who lived through the 1974 disaster.
Source: The Guardian.
