NORMALITY RETURNS AS DARWIN CLEANS UP

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33730, 31 December 1974, Page 2

NORMALITY RETURNS AS DARWIN CLEANS UP

(New Zealand Press Association—Copyright) DARWIN, December 30. The clean-up in Darwin is well under way. Utilities are returning to normal, and the rush to leave the stricken city has slowed.

Big earth-moving machines are clearing trees and debris from city roads, and 350 men with trucks are touring suburban streets, clearing away mounds of rotting rubbish from wrecked houses. The drastic reduction from 7500 to a little over 11000 evacuees today signalled I the end of what the chief of jthe Natural Disasters Organisation (Major General Alan Stretton) referred to as “phase one.” He said the clean-up was “phase two.” His first priority was to get as many people as possible out of the city, to reduce the risk of health problems and ease the strain on supplies. Despite a door-to-door I search, no more bodies have

I been found, and the death I toll stands at 48. I Tension which had been building in the city relaxed after the announcement of the evacuation slow-down. But workers who have been hard at it almost constantly since Cyclone Tracy smashed into Darwin on Christmas Day show signs of exhaustion. Many have been working round the clock, grabbing sleep where they can. The director of the Northern Territory Health Services (Dr Charles Gould) said today that the health of remaining residents was good. In the ruins of the outer I northern suburbs today there was a ghostly silence, broken only by the activities of searchers and garbage collectors. General Stretton has I estimated that 16,000 to 17,000 people remain in Darwin, but observers said they believed there might be even fewer.

At Darwin Airport, the mass evacuation scenes of yesterday, when 6000 people were flown out, were reduced to a scale of activity resembling that at a busy airport anywhere in the world — except for the damage to buildings and the broken planes piled up like toys in a child’s bedroom.

Many businesses are putting into effect “normalisation” programmes as their staff trickle back to work, after seeing their families safely evacuated and putting into order what, if anything, is left of their homes.

The Post Office has begun charging for calls, out of

Darwin, and journalists entering and leaving the city by commercial aircraft are expected to pay. Insurance companies are dealing with hundreds of claims, and the Social Services Department is paying a two-week allowance of $62 to residents of Darwin staying on in the town. Many residents are awaiting the Australian fleet. Two ships, the Brisbane and the Flinders, will arrive tomorrow afternoon, and the main fleet, commanded by Rear Admiral D. C. Wells, will arrive on Wednesday. The ships are bringing teams of experts and tons of supplies, to be used in reconstruction. The Navy will set up a shore command, possibly at Government House. The historic naval headquarters, built of stone in 1877, has been destroyed. In Darwin Harbour, teams of divers continue their search for missing vessels and bodies of seamen. Five small boats with crews of three or four are still unaccounted for. The Flinders will survey the harbour in preparation for the fleet’s arrival. Water and sewerage has i been reconnected to much of' the city centre, where most of the relief operations are based.

The police station has running water and air conditioning again.

Many of the other busy centres have also been supplied from the town’s power stations, or from generators.

A programme to re-roof houses that are still habitable is also underway, in a major effort to rehouse

people who have been living in little better than huts and humpies. Carloads of residents continue to leave the city, headed south, east and west.