TROPICAL WEATHER Crops left flattened by storms
FARMERS are counting the cost after savage winds tore through parts of the Cassowary Coast and left crops stripped bare and flattened to the ground.
Gusts of up to 90km/h lashed the Innisfail region for about half an hour early on Friday evening – although severe damage was fortunately highly localised.
Tao Hancock-Vue, who grows the starchy root vegetable taro on a property on the Palmerston Highway just outside Innisfail, was one of the unlucky ones.
“It was very selective where it hit,” she said.
“We’d only just planted two months ago, so they were about a metre high.
“They don’t have deep roots or bulbs yet to root them to the ground, so they were just flattened, uprooted and snapped.”
Ms Hancock-Vue said half of the crop – roughly 5000 plants – was destroyed.
Her neighbour’s property also endured severe damage with a new pawpaw plantation completely stripped.
Only the trunks remained standing, jutting out from a ground-level shambles of busted fruit and leaves.
Ms Hancock-Vue said it was a kick in the guts, but that was the life of a farmer – and things could definitely be worse.
“Any farming is just hard manual labour, a lot of TLC, and blood, sweat and tears,” she said.
“There’s no such thing as easy farming.
“It still hurts but it is what it is – it’s Mother Nature.
“With all the bushfires down south, that really puts things in perspective.
“I’ve lost a bit of my business but I still have my home.”
Cassowary Coast Regional Council Mayor John Kremastos said the region had largely escaped serious property damage, although fallen trees and branches were widespread.
Some banana farms had also racked up losses and there were several reports of small hailstones falling from the sky.
A century-old kauri pine at Innisfail’s Anzac Memorial Park was snapped at the base, as testament to the tempest’s wind strength.
“The Belvedere-East Palmerston
area, from what I’ve seen, seems to have been most heavily impacted,” Cr Kremastos said.
Ergon Energy has had an enormous job on its hands, with thousands of residents across the Cassowary Coast losing power.
More than 3000 homes were still cut off from the electricity grid in Innisfail alone on Saturday morning.
That figure had dropped to just 100 yesterday afternoon, almost 48 hours after power was initially cut.
Three-quarters of homes still in blackout were in areas off the Palmerston Highway, where access to damaged parts of the network was difficult.