A severe tropical cyclone packing winds of up to 250kph slammed into a major oil and mining region of western Australia on Thursday but missed the area’s main population centres.
Cyclone Glenda hit land about 4pm local time in cattle-grazing territory in the Pilbara region about 200km south-west of the massive oil- and ore-shipping centre of Karratha, the bureau of meteorology said.
Initial reports from the region said the storm, classified as a category four cyclone out of a maximum rating of five, ripped up trees and toppled power lines.
Authorities said their main concern was flooding caused by torrential rains and a sea surge of up to 10m in an area already soaked by weeks of storms.
Several hundred people were evacuated from low-lying areas around Karratha, the region’s main business centre, with a population of around 14 000.
But Glenda hit the coast to the south west between a big cattle station called Mardie and Onslow, a rural town of about 800 situated 1 300km north of Perth.
“The saving grace is it’s a relatively sparse area and direct hits are quite rare,” Western Australian weather forecaster Neil Bennett said.
Mardie station manager Richard Climas said Glenda was the fourth cyclone to hit his cattle ranch so far this storm season, which runs from November to April. “One over the top of us and one each side, now this one looks like it’s going to give us another touch up, but they were just sort of sea breezes; this is the proper one this one,” Climas said on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
Bennett said Mardie was “really going through it at the moment” and that the entire Pilbara region looked said to be inundated. “It’s not looking great,” he said.
Meteorologists said Glenda intensified slightly as it approached the coast and was rated very dangerous, nearly as powerful as Cyclone Larry which devastated towns on Australia’s far north-eastern coast 11 days ago.
Bennett said Glenda was comparable in destructive power to Cyclone Bobby, which killed seven people in the Pilbara in 1995.
The Pilbara, Australia’s main iron-ore producing region and site of major oil and natural-gas reserves, lies in what is known as “cyclone alley” because of the frequency of major storms that sweep in from the Indian Ocean each year.
Officials said they were particularly concerned over the danger of flooding, with Glenda’s surge coming when tides were already at their highest.
Mining and oil giants BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Santos and Woodside Petroleum shut down offshore rigs in the path of the storm and closed port operations around Karratha. Woodside and Santos sent floating oil rigs, from their big Cossack and Mutineer Exeter oilfields, out to sea away from Glenda’s route.
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto suspended all shipping of iron ore from their Pilbara mines but were continuing mining operations.
“At this stage we are in full tie-down at the ports, which means basically we have sent all our ships out to sea and stopped all operations at the port,” a Rio Tinto spokesperson said. — AFP