CYCLONE AT CAIRNS.

Colonist, Volume LXII, Issue 15307, 21 February 1920, Page 2

CYCLONE AT CAIRNS.

TERRIBLE NIGHT OF TERROR.

ESTIMATED DAMAGE £580,000

MOSQUITO FLEET DESTROYISD.

The cyclone which -struck Cairns, in 1 the northern part of Queensland, on the r evening of February 2 was of a most s violent^ description, find did damage r estimated at £580,000 in that town \ alone (writes a Sydney correspondent). 4 The whole of the surrounding district 1 suffered almost as severely. c I If the residents had had any warn- t ing much loss might have been avoided, t particularly along the waterfront. The \ meteorologists discovered what was c 1 brewing on the Monday evening, and 7 1 sent out urgent warnings, but somehow i the message fc did not reach Cairns until t II p.m., whCT. it was too late to warn i the townsfolk. The latter might have i noticed it for themselves, however; the c .baromoter suddenly fell to 29.17—a 1 sure sign of a cyclone in those latitudes, c At 2 a.m. the town was dark and 1 asleep. _ A few minutes later the wind i rose with appalling rapidity and force, t It bpomed, then it roared, and then it i shrieked and howled. At 2.30 there j was a light in ©very house, and the 1 people clustered nelplessly together in i terror. The bellow of the tempest in- < creased in intensity every minute. It 1 drowned all independent sound and •< movement. One could not walk againsc « it—^-those who tried were bowled over at once. Trees, chimneys, telephone poles, j and buildings began to go before the " gale. Roofs came away in every direc- : tioH j1 there was a constant crash of bursting windows; the air was full of ■ flying fragments. The police and am- ■ bulance men, assisted by many volun- '■ teers, worked very gallantly, rescuing people from collapsed houses and all sorts of perilous situations. The wind rose to the inaudible force of 100 miles an hour, and, sweeping the sea over into the town, brought new terrors. The retaining wall collapsed under the battering ot a fearful sea, and water rushed across intp the town. Houses were flooded—many collapsed; while havoc was worked in the harbour basin. The oak log industry is an im-i portant one in the Cairns district, and1 there were large rafts lying in the basin seasoning—about £9000 worth altogether. The maddened sea burst these rafts apart and the logs began to churn around tne basin, and every craft of any kind, including a large number of motor-boats, was crushed ana sunk, ('aims is the headquarters of quite a large mosquito fleet, and the damage] done was enormous. The— harbour { works—beacons, piers, walls, harbourside buildings—are almost completely wrecked. Mere description can convey little idea of what the conditions in the residential area were\ like during this period. The people from damaged houses fought .their way through the storm to safer places; and this terrorstricken migration became accentuated when the sea broke into the lower part of the town. The tempest had extinguished most of the street lights, and the trembling refugees had to struggle as best they could through the dark. A belief that the town was about to be engulfed by a tidal wave—a bfelief dv& to the roar of the sea and the flying salt spray—did nothing to lessen their terrors. The men doing rescue work collected women, lost children, invalids, and aged persons at the police and ambulance stations, and there gave them what help was possible. *