Australia's Top End city of Darwin battened down the hatches yesterday as its worst cyclone threat since Tracy devastated the city 30 years ago tore towards it along the country's northern coast.
Cyclone Ingrid, which has been terrorising northern Australian towns for a week, regained intensity yesterday as it headed for Darwin. Meteorologists upgraded it to a category five storm, the most dangerous.
"A lot of damage is caused by items which become missiles," Police Commander Max Pope warned Darwin residents yesterday afternoon. "People should be taking appropriate action. Stuff which can be secured should be secured," he said in a warning broadcast on Australian radio. With Ingrid rated more dangerous than category four Tracy, generating winds of more than 290 km an hour, Pope said a cyclone warning for Darwin was imminent.
Yesterday afternoon, Ingrid was around 500 km east of Darwin and heading west at 20 km an hour.
Although cyclones are notoriously fickle, Ingrid was expected to begin to hit Darwin within 24 hours. The city, with a population of around 110,000, was almost completely rebuilt after Tracy.
Earlier yesterday, meteorologist Stephen McInerney told an interviewer by telephone that Ingrid could "possibly" pose a threat to the Northern Territory capital.
"We'll have to wait and see," he said. Ingrid battered small, isolated outposts in the eastern Arnhem Land region on Australia's northern rim on Friday and yesterday.
The Darwin Cyclone Warning Centre upgraded Ingrid to category five yesterday morning after the storm hit the small mining town of Nhulumbuy overnight, forcing 250 townspeople and residents of outlying areas to huddle in a shelter.
Damage was mainly limited to fallen trees and power lines and no one was reported hurt. Ingrid then moved on to hit another small community on Elcho Island yesterday afternoon. Although more powerful than Tracy which laid waste to Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, Ingrid has a comparatively small eye of only 20 km in diameter, around which its most destructive winds swirl.
Ingrid was not the only cyclone threatening Australia's tropical north yesterday.
Severe tropical cyclone Willy, a category-three storm 515 km northwest offshore from Exmouth yesterday morning, was moving southwest at 15 km an hour and could cross the coast within days, the Western Australian Cyclone Warning Centre said.
A spokesman for Woodside Petroleum Ltd, operator of the Northwest Shelf oil and liquefied natural gas project, told Reuters that production had been unaffected so far and was not expected to be hit by the storm.
"They come and they go," he said, pointing out that the Northwest Shelf project was regularly in the pathway of severe tropical storms in Western Australia's "cyclone alley".
However, 102 drillers, engineers, mechanics and cooks were evacuated on Friday from the Jack Bates mobilised drilling rig as a precaution, he said.
The Northwest Shelf project is a major source of liquefied natural gas for Asian power stations.