As dawn breaks ...

As the skies lighten in far north Queensland, the extent of the damage from Cyclone Yasi will become apparent. It does seem however as though it may not be quite as bad as anticipated.

Yasi made landfall in the early hours of the morning (NZ time) around the towns of Mission Beach and Tully, but away from Cairns to the north and Townsville to the south. Although there is going to be widespread damage and devastation, it seems as though the larger population centres have had something of a lucky escape. We cannot imagine the terror of being caught up in something like this.

It was chilling late yesterday to hear the Queensland Premier telling people in the area that the time at which they could safely evacuate had passed, and that they simply had to hunker down and hope.

Queensland police were, at last update, reporting widespread damage but no injuries or deaths so far. However with widespread power outages, and Yasi's arrival in the middle of the night, the scope of the damage will be difficult to measure. We'll be keeping a close eye on things throughout the day; in the meantime our thoughts and our prayers are with those who have been affected by this freak of nature.