Devastation in Queensland

[Troy]

A few weeks back Queensland (NSW and Victoria were also flooded) suffered some of the worst floods in Australian history. 75% of the state was a disaster zone and the area affected was more than five times the size that was affected by Huricanne Katrina. The Brisbane river, among many other rivers, broke its banks and flooded the CBD of Brisbane. Many towns were destroyed and lives were lost. The clean-up has been under way in the past week or two and nearly $200 million has been donated to the appeal fund.

Tonight everything is going to get a hell of a lot worse. Tropical Cyclone Yasi will hit around midnight. It is a category five TC and it is meant to have gusts of wind up to 300kph. It is terrible news for residents who have just been through one disaster and now have to prepare for another.

Hopefully there will be no loss of life and that everyone can get to a safe place before it hits. Please keep all Queenslanders in your thoughts as they are in for a horrific night. If there are any Queenslanders on the forum then I hope that you have been able to find a safe location for the night.

 

[Troy]

Thankfully the cyclone hit a relatively sparsely populated section of Queensland so the damage was much less then predicted. There was still a lot of damage but if it was a bit more south then it would have been much worse. There is much cleaning up to do but thankfully it wasn't as deadly as predicted.

Here are some images showing just how big this cyclone was and what area it would have impacted if it was in different regions of the world.

Yasi superimposed on USA:

Yasi superimposed on Asia:

Yasi superimposed on central and western Europe: