Thousands feared homeless after cyclone hits Australia

CAIRNS, Australia -- Metal roofs littered streets, wooden houses lay in splinters and banana plantations were stripped bare after the most powerful cyclone to hit Australia in three decades lashed the country's eastern coast Monday.\nAmazingly, the storm caused no reported fatalities, and only 30 people suffered minor injuries. But the damage from Cyclone Larry, a Category 5 storm with winds up to 180 mph, was expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.\nHardest hit was Innisfail, a farming city of 8,500 people 60 miles south of the tourist city of Cairns in northeastern Queensland state.\n"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."\nThe town urgently needs accommodation for people whose homes were damaged, a power supply to feed hospitals and other infrastructure, he said.\nThere was no official count of number of homes destroyed Monday, but given the severity of the damage, the figure could run into the thousands, Clarke said.\nThe 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 in the United States last August, said Ben Creagh, a spokesman for Queensland Department of Emergency Services.\n"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."\nWithin hours of the storm's landfall, officials declared a state of emergency, prepared Black Hawk helicopters to run rescue missions and announced cash payouts for victims -- $720 for each adult and $290 for each child who lost a home. Prime Minister John Howard indicated more aid was to come.\nQueensland Premier Peter Beattie said 55 percent of homes in Innisfail had been damaged, though rescue teams had yet to get full access to the swamped region. All roads into the town remained blocked late Monday.\nInnisfail Barrier Reef Motel owner Amanda Fitzpatrick echoed the mayor's damage assessment.\n"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.\nFarmers were expected to be among the hardest hit. The area is a major growing region for bananas and sugar cane, and vast tracts of the crops were flattened.\n"It looks like someone's gone in there with a slasher and slashed the top off everything," said Bill Horsford, a cane farmer.\nThe storm also barreled over a portion of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, damaging a narrow band of coral, said David Wachenfeld, director of science at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the government body that cares for the reef.\nThe reef is more than 1,240 miles long, and the affected area is only about 30 miles across and far from the places where nearly 2 million tourists a year gaze in awe at the coral's vibrant colors and fish life, he said.\nIt would take 10 to 20 years for new coral to grow and replace the damaged area, he said.\nThe storm was the most powerful to hit Australia since Christmas Eve 1974, when Cyclone Tracy destroyed the northern city of Darwin, killing 65 people.\nA man who answered the phone at an Innisfail evacuation center late Monday said it was too soon to estimate the number of people who lost their homes.\n"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"