Category Five Cyclone Yasi Charges The Coast

Awesome in its destructive power, Category Five Cyclone Yasi is coming in fast for places like Innisfail, which only recently recovered from 2006's Cyclone Larry. Yasi is bigger and more destructive than Larry, though, and its power will be felt far, far inland:

CYCLONE YASI has been upgraded to Category Five and is likely to cross the coast earlier than expected at 10pm Wednesday evening, according to the latest update from the Bureau of Meteorology.

Cyclone Yasi is expected to cross just south of Cairns, in the latest update from the Bureau of Meterology.

...“Even as you go inland we will see very destructive winds,” a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said.

“Even when it gets to places like George Town and Croyden we will still be seeing a category two, and cyclone watch as far as Mt Isa.

...“It is a very large system, certainly larger than what we saw with Larry and the damaging winds will be a lot stronger than Larry,” he said.

The eye of the cyclone, around 60km wide, is expected to cross through Cairns or just south of the city between Cairns and Innisfail.

More than 30,000 Queenslanders are being relocated in a desperate bid to protect them from the fury of Cyclone Yasi, as authorities brace for a massive assault on the state.

...``This is probably the biggest cyclone in living memory,'' said Cairns Mayor Val Schier.

...Yasi has also sparked flood fears in inland Gulf of Carpentaria communities such as Georgetown, Croydon, Forsayth, Einasleigh, Normanton, Burketown, Karumba and Doomadgee. Low-lying Georgetown homes are considered most at risk of flooding.

Hundreds of Cairns residents last night began fleeing up the Great Dividing Range to the Atherton Tablelands.

Tablelands officials have investigated the possibility of housing some of the displaced in the Lotus Glen prison.

...Entire supermarkets from Townsville to Cooktown have been emptied of supplies in a rush on panic-buying.

Motorists filling up vehicles with fuel formed queues hundreds of metres long outside service stations.

Power is likely to be cut for up to a week in some areas with the winds likely to damage powerlines and substations.

The only relief for residents was a down-grading of the forecast storm surge from 6m to between 2-2.5m, with Yasi due to hit at low tide, Ms Bligh said.

...Eleven planes ferried more than 250 hospital patients from Cairns to Brisbane on Tuesday night in what's believed to be Queensland's biggest mass medical evacuation, as the Government took the drastic decision to evacuate 255 patients from the Cairns Base and Cairns Private hospitals.

The evacuation involved some of the state's sickest patients, including those being treated in intensive care, as well as premature babies, heavily pregnant women, people with heart conditions and others requiring renal dialysis.

...Cyclone Yasi is twice the size of Cyclone Larry that devastated Innisfail in 2006 and is packing winds of 250km/h and over.