Western Australia hit by super storm
Perth: A massive storm was wreaking havoc on southern coastal parts of Western Australia, including Perth, with thousands of homes without power, trees down and reports of widespread property damage.
State Emergency Services (SES) staff had answered hundreds of calls for help over Sunday night and yesterday morning.
Most were for structural and roof damage with the majority of call-outs in the Perth metropolitan area and Mid West Gascoyne. Wind gusts of up to 132 kilometres per hour were recorded at Cape Leeuwin, in the state’s south-west, at 4:15am, while Kalgoorlie Airport recorded gusts of up to 94kph. Western Power was working to restore supplies to about 50,000 properties from the Mid West to the Great Southern districts, including Perth.
Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecaster Rohan Smith told ABC Radio damaging winds would continue for much of the south of the state throughout yesterday. “Winds have now eased up in the northwest, anywhere south-west of a line Lancelin to Bremer Bay can expect gusts isolated gusts of 130kph this (yesterday) morning,” he said.
“Between Kalbarri and Augusta, people on the coast need to watch out for a dangerous storm tide, which is going to be well above the normal high tide mark, with damaging waves and flooding also expected.
“This will extend further east to Albany during the day.”
Heavy rainfall, power outages across South West
The SES responded to almost 400 requests for assistance across the state from about 8:00am on Sunday and Department of Fire and Emergency Services chief superintendent Danny Mosconi told ABC Radio Perth the majority had come from the Perth metropolitan area.
“Pretty much the whole metro area and in fact most of the state … we’re starting to see some coming in now from the South West as well, but [it’s been] pretty widespread. A lot of structural damage, roof damage, water inundation trees down over property,” he said.