[PPRAANet] Cyclone Larry hits VK4BS

[W0rw at aol.com]

Tropical Cyclone Larry hits Innisfail, Queensland,  South of Cairns.

Here is a message from Howard,  VK4BS, 3/20/06.
He is a PRC319 Yahoogroup member.
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I write this with the aid of my trusty petrol generator! We were quite lucky 
- the house is sort of nestled in and the winds here (which were not as bad as 
Cairns itself) passed pretty well by us. I lost a couple of very large trees 
but they fell back into the forest and not on the house. The biggest took a 
few others with it on the way down and I have a heap of work to do next weekend 
with the chain saw opening up the track into the forest again.


I loosened off the dipole (which runs between trees) so it survived although 
one of the guys for it was snapped by the big tree that fell. Luckily the 
remaining piece was in reach so I could get it back up and running pretty quickly 
(see I have my priorities right!).


Of course these days all the buildings here are designed for cyclones. Our 
house, which is concrete blocks, has ties running from the top of the wall down 
into the concrete slab base. The shed I just built (not quite finished) is 
also designed for the conditions and screws for roofing material, wall cladding, 
etc are specified accordingly. Seems the engineers got that right as there was 
zero damage to it.


So, as you can see, we are all well. Lots of preparation probably helped too 
but luck was on our side.


Things will get back to normal over the next few days although the earliest 
they expect to have power back will be tomorrow some time and it could be a few 
days more than that. At the moment we don’t have any TV except for a couple 
of channels broadcast to outback Australia via satellite, as all the 
transmitting sites are, presumably out of power.


Now we have been told that another cyclone is forming out in the Coral Sea so 
it could be another exciting week or two ahead of us...

I don’t know the wind speed at my house (for some reason my wind speed 
indicator topped out at 25km/h) but I believe 280km/h and possible 300km/h were 
achieved in the center.


Funny you ask about emergency comms. WICEN (Wireless Institute Civil 
Emergency Network) in recent newsletters has talked of the need for preparation for 
the cyclone season. They have a sched every Sunday morning at 0830 local and 
last Sunday there was virtually no one to be heard! I think they may have all 
been off doing field radio comms in an Australia wide competition...


So far as I am aware WICEN did not provide any comms post Larry. I should 
mention though that I was an active member of WICEN when I lived in Victoria but 
have not rejoined since coming to Kuranda. One of the reasons is that I 
emailed them several times before leaving Melbourne but never got a reply. So they 
may have been providing some comms and I would not necessarily be aware of it, 
particularly as the major area for damage is about 100 km South at Innisfail.


Regards,

Howard  VK4BS
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There was a lot of Banana and sugar damage.

via w0rw