The aftermath of Yasi: Townsville

      I was pretty surprised, after enduring a long night with howling winds and a massive frog orchestra to awake to chirping birds and partly cloudy skies but not surprised that there was no power and soon no water (council sends out an sms to your mobile to keep people aware). Pretty strong gusts were still coming through and rain in bands but still, we felt the need to explore the damage across the city.
    My neighborhood fared pretty well with tree damage and fences knocked down and the odd tree on a house but oddly enough, not bad in comparison.

This is where smart happens: Old flatmates trying to fetch a gum limb off of the power line. Glad I'm not with that lot.

This is right around the corner from me.

A friend's backyard who lives on Castle Hill. There used to be several trees here and that is his laundry tree in the foreground.

                                             It blew the leaves right off of the frangipani tree.

                                                          Coconut palm right into the house.

                                            The storm surge caused alot of flooding along Ross River.

      The Strand (which is one of major beachfront tourist attractions) got the worst of it. Naturally facing right into it that was to be expected and the day before the army (AJs) went knocking on doors to enforce compulsory evacuations. The Strand also got the massive storm surge, forcing sand into buildings and covering roadways. So many trees were down. This is mainly due to the English way of planting pretty trees instead of natives and with the sandy soil and clay underneath the roots could only spread sideways not down, which makes them more prone to topple in high winds.

                           So how much time do you think it will take to get the sand out of those carpets??

This was a decorative whirly-gig, I knew it would be destroyed, pieces of it were thrown all over the place. I'm glad no one was near this death contraption.
    

      It will be some time before Townsville looks the way it did, an estimated 50% tree loss. I love green, maybe I'll move north, oh wait, the rainforest blew away... :(