Quotes of the Day

Tropical Cyclone Larry announced itself with a roar of wind through the streets of Innisfail around 5 a.m. last Monday. The day before, the 8,500 residents of the tiny far north Queensland town had enjoyed some blue skies and a light breeze, making the urgent warnings on television and radio sound faintly ridiculous. But 650 km to the northeast, Larry was sucking power from the moisture-laden tropical air, its growth favored by circulation patterns over the warm coral seas south of Solomon Islands. Overnight, the 200-km-wide Category Four storm zeroed in on the cane and banana farming district.

About 4:30 a.m. in East Innisfail, Karl Hocke and his family were woken by the wind battering their hillside timber-and-fibro home. They sat together in the lounge room, hoping the worst had passed, but by 5 a.m. the house had begun to vibrate with alarming regularity. When 18-year-old Nikita went to the toilet she found she couldn't sit down because the seat was bucking so badly. The glass doors on the veranda were bowing inward; Karl tried to calm his 13-year-old son Aden, while his wife Jenny put down towels to stop the sideways rain from entering the house. It was then that Larry's 200 km/h winds swept over their roof and vacuumed it upward.

Karl grabbed Aden and pushed him under a mattress. "I just yelled 'Get under there, lay on the floor,' and I got down with him,'' he says. Nikita and her boyfriend Michael managed to get into the hallway under mattresses, but Jenny was caught. "I heard this explosion and I looked up and saw the roof suddenly sucked 30 m up into the air, spinning around and around, and above it the sky was a weird electric blue. I felt myself being sucked upward," she says. "It was like a twister.'' Karl thought the worst: "I heard this scream and then nothing. She's gone. She's been taken.'' Aden was sure he was going to die. "Don't let me go, Dad. Hold on,'' he begged, as he felt the wind pulling at him. For half an hour, the family huddled on the floor, until Larry's 40-km-wide eye suddenly arrived over Innisfail. It was about 7 a.m. Karl screamed frantically for his wife and was amazed when she screamed back. They ran to a neighbor's low-slung brick house to wait out the rest of the storm.

Larry was the third cyclone to land a direct hit on Innisfail in the past century. In 1918, 37 townspeople died; in 1986, Tropical Cyclone Winifred left three dead. And there may be worse to come: some believe changes to the Earth's climate system are boosting the ferocity of tropical cyclones. Says Melbourne-based climate expert Professor Ian Simmonds: "Progressively you are creating an environment which is going to encourage more intense cyclones. In terms of statistics they are becoming less frequent but more intense.'' Simmonds and Brazilian scientist Alexandre Pezza last year published a groundbreaking paper arguing global warming had contributed to the appearance of the first documented tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic.

In Belvedere, on the other side of Innisfail, Bruce Crausaz was confident his squat solid-brick home would easily withstand the gale-force winds - until he saw his wall-mounted television spear towards him. The heavy set catapulted him onto the floor. Rain pelted down on him. The roof was gone. Crausaz crawled out of the kitchen and in terror grabbed a plastic bucket, which he put over his head. For the next 40 minutes he half-knelt, half-lay on the floor with the bucket on his head, tightly gripping the door. "I know it wouldn't have stopped much," he says, "but I thought if I could keep the door closed it would just stop any projectiles flying into me; I thought I would survive.''

When Larry finally departed Innisfail about 10 a.m., it left a smear of destruction more than 60 km wide. One man was dead and dozens injured; property damage was estimated at more than $A1 billion; tens of thousands of hectares of bananas, sugar cane and other crops were flattened; more than 100,000 homes in north Queensland were left without electricity; hundreds are homeless. The federal government announced a $A100 million relief package, and former Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort. Some 450 State Emergency Services personnel have joined 300 soldiers, many of whom participated in the Banda Aceh relief effort after the 2004 tsunami.

At week's end, Cyclone Wati, formed in Larry's wake, was stirring up waves as it tracked southeast, parallel to the Queensland coast. Meteorologists said it was unlikely to hit land, which is some comfort to the people of Innisfail. As Jenny Hocke says, "It's something I don't think we could ever go through again.'' It may be a long time before Innisfail suffers again; but there are ominous signs it may be struck even harder next time.

• Rory Callinan
• Cyclone Larry ripped through Queensland's north coast last week. Its victims tell terrifying tales of a force of nature whose power may yet be growing