Departing Narelle leaves a trail of devastation
Nick Wilson and John Kidman |
After lashing coastal communities with 250km/h winds and dumping a year’s worth of rain in a day, ex-Tropical Cyclone Narelle has again headed offshore.
Weakening to a subtropical low as it cut inland across Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, Narelle moved off the state’s south coast on Saturday evening.
Not, though, before leaving a trail of destruction in parts of the Pilbara and North West Cape, including Exmouth, a holiday town 1250km north of Perth.
“There’s pretty much devastation everywhere you look,” local Craig Kitson told AAP.
“The town has fundamentally changed.”
Exmouth’s few thousand residents bore the brunt of the historical system, which had previously made landfall in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Roofs were torn off buildings, power was lost, homes were flooded and about 50 people had to abandon a local evacuation centre when it sustained wind damage.
Though he lost a fence and spent the night under a leaking roof, Mr Kitson counts himself lucky.
“It was definitely a harrowing night there for a lot of people” he said, adding some homes had been completely destroyed.
“Some people’s lives have been drastically changed.”
Thousands of homes and businesses were left without power and some 40 Pilbara residents SES requested assistance.
Narelle tracked south to Coral Bay and came ashore on Friday evening just south of the tiny town before weakening to a category three system.
It was downgraded to a category two northeast of Kalbarri and Geraldton before becoming a tropical low on Saturday morning.
Overnight, gusts above 120km/h were recorded in parts of the Gascoyne, alongside rainfall totals of up to 100mm, increasing the risk of flash flooding and road closures.
Exmouth and surrounds copped wind gusts up to 250km/h.
Narelle was expected to continue losing intensity as it moved inland but was still producing powerful gusts and heavy rain, the bureau said.
A watch and act alert remains in place west of Onslow to Coral Bay, with advice level warnings covering much of the state.
Narelle also continues to exacerbate the global fuel supply crunch, disrupting production at two of Australia’s biggest liquefied natural gas plants.
After hitting WA on Thursday, the system hindered LNG operations run by Chevron and Woodside.
Chevron Australia said on Saturday it was working to restore production at its Gorgon and Wheatstone facilities following outages due to Narelle.
“We will resume full production at both facilities once it is safe to do so,” a spokesman said.
Located on Barrow Island, north of Exmouth, Gorgon is Australia’s largest LNG export facility, producing 15.6 million metric tonnes a year.
Wheatstone operate two processing units, producing 8.9 million tonnes annually.
Woodside says a “production interruption due to the cyclone” continues at its Karratha gas plant, while production was uninterrupted at its Macedon and Pluto facilities.
The Port of Dampier, one of several key WA iron ore and LNG ports, reopened on Saturday but “general cargo import operations” remained suspended.
An “inspection has identified significant asset damage across Pilbara Ports general cargo precinct, caused by destructive winds, wave uplift forces, swell, and storm surge”, with port access restricted to key personnel, the port operator said.
Australia became the world’s second-largest LNG exporter after Qatar shut down production this month following damage to its facilities from Iranian strikes.
with Reuters
AAP