The power came back on around midday today (Monday), after being off since 8.30pm on Wednesday night – but many other people are still waiting. Electricity crews have a massive job, with so many trees down over lines and power poles snapped off. At the end of our street the top half of a power pole was burnt. For unrelated reasons our landline phone went off on Wednesday morning and was reconnected late yesterday (Sunday) – I thought we might have to wait weeks.
It took us the best part of 2 days to clear the vegetation out the front & back of the house, and many other people had similar work – it’s been like one massive working bee all over North Queensland; a massive cleanup & put-away effort before the cyclone, and then a massive cleanup and restoration effort afterwards. Nearly every house has a huge mount of trees & bushes waiting out the front to be mulched. Fridges and freezers have had to be spring cleaned, and as soon as the water supply is back to normal, the eastern side of houses will have to be gurneyed too – the eastern side of our house has a fur coat of shredded palm fronds and tree leaves.
The wind picked up early on the Wednesday evening, reached a peak around midnight and was still gusting over 100km on Thursday morning. In fact the wind only dropped after a bit of rain around 4pm on Thursday. Most unusual – usually strong winds only last a few hours or so – not 24 hours, as was the case with Yasi.
With the power and phone back on, it will be business as usual as soon as all the cleanup jobs are finished – by the end of this week.
Everyone feels pressure when such a significant event is being prepared for and it’s difficult to concentrate and easy to overlook the obvious. Consequently I operate from a list I’ve put together over the years – essentials to buy and essential preparations -starting from the outside and working inside (preparations that can be done a few hours before a cyclone hits). Over the coming week I hope to find time to add some of it to the blog – because there’s some things that others appear to be unaware of – eg if a chest freezer is well insulated as soon as the power goes off, ice will stay frozen in it for days. Little things that make life without electricity a lot easier to take!
With the sea temperature still over 27 degrees, the cyclone season is not over yet – and Townsville has had an unusually dry 4 weeks or so, with just bits of rain.
This suggests it’s saving up to drop it in the one hit, probably this month.
Tags: Fiona Lake Photography