Aussies Clean Up After Major Cyclone

Metal roofs littered streets, wooden houses were reduced to splinters, and banana plantations were stripped bare, all as the result of the most powerful cyclone to lash Australia's east coast in decades.

Amazingly, there were no fatalities and only 30 people suffered minor injuries as severe cyclone Larry pounded northeastern Queensland state early Monday with winds gusting to 180 mph. Damage was expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hardest hit was Innisfail, a farming city of 8,500 people 60 miles south of the tourist city of Cairns. Officials say it was the worst cyclone in decades, Michael Usher of National Nine News reports on The Early Show.

"It looks like an atomic bomb hit the place," Innisfail mayor Neil Clarke told Australian television. "It is severe damage. This is more than a local disaster, this is a national disaster."

The town urgently needed accommodation for people whose homes were damaged, a power supply to feed hospitals and other infrastructure, he said, adding: "We won't even have any water to drink by tomorrow."

There was no official count of the homeless Monday, but given the number of homes badly damaged, the figure could run into the thousands, Clarke said.

The casualty toll was so low because people left town or went to shelters after authorities posted warnings. Residents and officials were mindful of the damage Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans and Mississippi last August, said Ben Creagh, a spokesman for Queensland state Department of Emergency Services.

"Everyone here studied Katrina and took a lot of messages away, a lot of lessons at the expense of the poor old Yanks," Creagh said. "There was absolutely no complacency at the planning level at all, and I think that shows. ... Good planning, a bit of luck, we've dodged a bullet."

Many of the people who left are expected to return Tuesday, a lot of them without knowing if their homes are still standing.

"Tomorrow is going to be a big day," Creagh said. "There will be some devastated people."

Military helicopters were to join relief efforts Tuesday, flying damage assessment flights and carrying a medical team to Innisfail, Defense Minister Brendan Nelson said.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said 55 percent of homes in Innisfail had been damaged, though rescue and assessment teams had yet to get full access to the swamped region as the tail end of the storm deluged it with rain. All roads into Innisfail remained blocked late Monday night.

"We haven't had a cyclone like this for decades, if we've ever had one like it before," he said.

Innisfail Barrier Reef Motel owner Amanda Fitzpatrick echoed the mayor's assessment of the damage.

"We could only go out in the eye of the storm and have a look and it just looks like an atomic bomb has gone off," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

But as Innisfail residents took stock of the damage, visitors to the popular tourist mecca of Cairns were out shopping for duty free goods and dining at alfresco restaurants.

Several fallen trees and a few closed shops were the only obvious signs that a major cyclone had passed through this tropical resort town, a popular jumping-off point for Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef.

At a bar in central Cairns late Monday, two dozen tourists and locals sipped drinks and chatted as on any other night.

At least two patrons said they had slept right through the storm.

"I went to bed and in the morning when I woke up it was all over and I went to work," said Clint Whitehorn, 33, a tourism worker who has lived in Cairns for four years.

Farmers were expected to be among the hardest hit. The region is a major growing region for bananas and sugar cane and vast tracts of the crops were flattened.

"It looks like someone's gone in there with a slasher and slashed the top off everything," said Bill Horsford, an Innisfail cane farmer and member of the Cane Protection and Productivity Board.

"Cane farmers were looking for good prices this year ... the first bright light for some time, and this has just turned that right around," he said. "You're probably looking at ... 40 to 50 percent losses in the cane industry."

Queensland lawmaker Bob Katter estimated the cost in lost revenue could run to about $108 million.

Also hit was the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier Reef, a tourist magnet that draws nearly 2 million visitors each year. Hundreds of tourists and thousands of residents hunkered down inside resort hotels and homes as the cyclone smashed into the coast, reports CBS News.

"The intense part of the storm is somewhere in the region of 30 miles across," said David Wachenfeld, director of science at the government body that cares for the reef. "The Great Barrier Reef is more than 1,240 miles long, so what you're looking at here is a narrow band of damage going through the middle of a very large area."

Wachenfeld added that the worst-hit area of the reef was not one that was popular with tourists, and that it would recover, though that could take 20 years.

State authorities declared a natural disaster and Prime Minister John Howard responded by pledging immediate cash to the homeless of $720 for each adult and $290 for each child who lost their home. Howard indicated much more aid was to come after the government assessed the damage.

Howard said he would visit Innisfail later in the week.

A man who answered a phone at an evacuation center in the town late Monday said it was impossible to estimate the number of people who had lost their homes, because evacuees were spread across various temporary housing centers and there was no centralized reporting yet.

"We are trying to collate at the moment how many houses have been destroyed, how many people we have in shelters," he said. "There are just so many people and so much damage."

Schools, business and airports in the affected region are expected to remain closed for at least another day, Usher reports on The Early Show.