/ 11 March 2007

Second Aussie cyclone downgraded

A second tropical cyclone menacing Australia’s north-west coast was downgraded Sunday as the prime minister offered to send troops to help clean up damage from last week’s storm.

Residents have been scrambling to clean up the rubble left by Cyclone George, which slammed into Australia’s remote Pilbara region on Thursday, killing two people and injuring about 20 others.

A third man died Sunday from injuries he sustained in the storm, according to Western Australia state police spokesperson Ros Weatherall.

Prime Minister John Howard offered to send Australian soldiers to the area to help emergency crews pick up debris and restore power to many areas cut off by the storm.

But residents of the battered north-west got a reprieve on Sunday when forecasters downgraded another approaching cyclone to a less-powerful category two.

Cyclone Jacob was initially expected to strike the Pilbara region with the same intensity as George, which packed wind gusts up to 275km/h. Forecasters rated George a category four, the second worst on a scale of one to five.

But Jacob lost some speed late on Saturday and was expected to hit the coast with wind gusts up to 110km/h, according to meteorologist Caroline Bojarski.

”The system just looks like it slowed a little bit, which will delay the crossing [over land],” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cyclones — called typhoons throughout much of Asia and hurricanes in the Western hemisphere — are large-scale rotating storms that generate high winds and typically form at sea before moving inland.

The storms are common along Australia’s northern and western coasts from November to April. — Sapa-AP