Township battered by cyclone

SEVERE Tropical Cyclone Trevor has smashed houses, speared trees through windows and downed powerlines as it unloads up to 220km winds on Cape York.

Lockhart River, population 800, was on the edge of the 75km-wide eye of the storm as it hit a 300km-long stretch of the coast about 4pm yesterday.

Category 3 Cyclone Trevor battered the former aboriginal mission for more than six hours as the tiny township felt the outer brunt of the “very destructive core” before it moved slowly inland last night.

“We’re right in the middle of it,’’ Lockhart River Mayor Wayne Butcher said. “It is just howling, it’s a wild crazy screaming noise, the rain is horizontal, stuff is flying. There’s trees down everywhere, houses are getting smashed by 180km/h winds.”

Extra police and emergency crews were deployed ahead of very destructive winds, a storm surge on top of abnormally high tides, and torrential rain and thunderstorms across much of the Cape.

Disaster co-ordinator Police Chief Superintendent Brian Huxley warned residents to stay indoors to avoid “missiles flying about at high speed”.

He said many roads across the north could be cut by flash flooding and to heed the message “if it’s flooded, forget it”.

Cyclone Trevor will weaken as it crosses the northern Peninsula today, but is expected to reintensify in the Gulf and become a Category-4 cyclone by Friday.