I’m trying not to wake the family with my laughter, having just seen Australia’s Prime Minister on TV saying that he has declined George Bush’s offer of aid after Cyclone Larry struck the North Queensland coast early on Monday morning.
I guess Dubya thinks he knows something about hurricanes…
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What he doesn’t know is that Australia has a well-organised and well-rehearsed disaster response mechanism, with close cooperation between national and state governments, civil emergency services and the military.
Tropical Cyclone Larry (hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are regionally-specific names for the same thing) was upgraded from a category 4 to a category 5 cyclone not long before it reached the coast.
Well before that happened, people in affected areas had been warned about appropriate shelter and those living adjacent to the sea were visited by police and state emergency service volunteers and told to evacuate.
Larry crossed the coast south of Cairns, with 290km/h winds damaging the towns of Babinda, Innisfail and Mission Beach. The Mayor of Innisfail has said that it looks like an atomic bomb has gone off. [Curiously slate has set out to test this claim, and decided that a category 5 cyclone causes similar damage to a 10-megaton momb at 1.5 miles.]
The fortunate thing is that North Queensland is not very heavily populated – not nearly as much as the US Gulf coast. Innisfail has a population of about 8,000, while the Cairns region would total about 120,000. As a result of the preparations, and probably also the fact that building regulations envisage cyclone strikes, there have been few injuries and no reported deaths.
Just over a day after the cyclone struck, army personnel from Townsville have already set up a mobile water purification plant, a field kitchen and field hospital at Innisfail. The soldiers have begun repairing schools to provide somewhere for emergency workers to sleep. A thousand state emergency service volunteers have begun cleanup and protection work. The troops involved have had good experience, having been to Bandar Aceh (Indonesia) in the aftermath of the Tsunami 15 months ago.
The Queensland Premier has declared a state of emergency in order to allow established forms of national government disaster assistance to flow – including cash payments to families.
It seems that destruction of property has been significant – perhaps hundreds of homes totally destroyed and thousands unroofed. One early estimate of the economic loss is over a billion dollars. The region is noted for tourism, sugar and banana production. Some 90 to 95% of Australian banana production has just been destroyed, so I guess they are about to be a luxury item.
Oh, I almost forgot… the Prime Minister and the Queensland Premier, who are from opposing political parties, will together visit the area tomorrow. The PM was at pains to say he would not go until he could be sure he would not divert resources from emergency work.
Nothing if not street-wise, John Howard. He shows every sign of being Prime Minister for a further ten years. And even if Dubya doesn’t know much about hurricanes, John Howard has certainly learnt something from him… and Katrina.
