Latest news "Alfred" loses strength off Australia: only low pressure area left
Cyclone "Alfred", which was heading for Australia's east coast as a cyclone, has lost strength and has been downgraded to a tropical depression. It moved slowly towards the coast north-east of the metropolis of Brisbane on Saturday morning (local time) with sustained wind speeds of 55 kilometers per hour, according to the national weather service.
08.03.2025, 08:35
SDA
However, experts had expected considerable damage anyway, not so much because of the - now weakened - gusts of wind, but mainly because of heavy rain and flooding. In this respect, there was no all-clear. Thousands of people were asked by the authorities to leave the affected areas as a precautionary measure. Most schools, supermarkets, roads and airports were closed and hundreds of thousands of sandbags were distributed to residents and business owners.
"It will get worse in the coming hours. We must remain vigilant. This is a very serious weather event," Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned this morning. "It will continue to bring strong winds, heavy rain, flooding and dangerous conditions to south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales this weekend and in the days that follow."
A quarter of a million households without power
For the residents of the two states, this is an unfamiliar threat - no cyclone has reached the coast of the densely populated region, which is also popular with tourists, for 50 years. Even before the low-pressure system made landfall, around 250,000 households lost power due to the storm. Prime Minister Albanese announced that the government would have generators brought to the region to restore the power supply. However, this could take some time.
Even before the most severe phase of the storm began, some buildings were damaged, trees uprooted and electricity pylons knocked down. "We've had a number of cases where trees have fallen on houses, cars and power lines," Queensland's head of government David Crisafulli was quoted as saying by the ABC television station. Even the first foothills of the storm flooded entire streets in some places.
