Cyclone Narelle hammers WA towns as category 2 system tracks south, placing Geraldton under emergency warning

Cyclone Narelle’s wrecking spree through three States and Territories is set to leave its final mark on WA on Saturday as towns and communities start to deal with the damage left in its ferocious wake.

The cyclone cut a swath of destruction in the North West on Friday, severing power to thousands of properties, flooding homes, ripping roofs off buildings and tearing up trees.

As it barrelled down the coast before cutting inland, it forced the North West Shelf offline, adding to disruptions at other LNG projects — in total, halting three-quarters of WA’s gas production and more than 8 per cent of the world’s output.

With Queensland and the Northern Territory still cleaning up from Narelle’s destructive tour de force, Australia will finally say farewell — or good riddance — to the big blow as what is left of dissipated Narelle exits into the Southern Ocean, west of Esperance.

The system ceased to be cyclone-strength on Friday night, but shaken towns and communities in the North West were in recovery mode and face costly clean-ups after copping the full force of Narelle’s fury.

It was a severe category four tropical cyclone up until around midday when it calmed slightly to a category three. It was downgraded to category two just before 5pm.

About 8pm DFES issued an emergency warning advising residents south of Binnu to Greenough to ‘shelter indoors now.’

The most severe impacts were felt along the Pilbara and northern Gascoyne coasts that were lashed by intense winds of up to 260km an hour.

Exmouth and its surrounds were significantly impacted.

Roofs were blown off homes and trees were uprooted. An evacuation centre in the town with 40 residents bunkering down had roof sheets ripped off.

Nearby, flooding was so severe properties were semi-submerged. Since midnight Thursday, 344.8mm of rain had fallen there.

More than 1500 properties in the area were without power.

A weather radar station near Learmonth, which provides vital storm tracking data, was knocked out.

Exmouth local Leith Holtzman said it felt like a “dinosaur” was outside his house, roaring to get in.

“It was like it’s trying to tear into (my) house,” he said.

He tried to get under his bed.

“From 4am to 6am it was horrific,” he said. “I couldn’t fit under the bed, but had about half my body under the bed.

“I haven’t slept. I experienced Cyclone Owen but this is another level.”

The West was in touch with a large group sheltering together for 20 hours in a recreation room just outside of Exmouth.

Amanda Kailis said a peep hole was their only window to see what was happening outside.

“It’s just been a very long day and a long night,” she said. “We’ve had gusts up to 190km/h . . . we haven’t left the room so I can’t tell you what the damage is.

“We’ve got 22 people here and two dogs. Morale has been high because we have provisions. I think we caught the the tail of the eye (of the cyclone).”

Ningaloo Caravan Park general manager Rachel Wells said she’d been through cyclones before, but this was “next level”.

“I’m looking out the window and there are trees down and roofs are off,” she said. “We are exhausted and shattered.”

Bullara Station Stay, between Exmouth and Coral Bay, suffered significant damage, owner Edwina Shallcross told The West.

The 250,000-acre working cattle station is a popular, award-winning tourism destination that was recently a filming location on Home and Away was hit at 1am.

“It’s been battering us for around 10 hours now,” Ms Shallcross said. “Half of our homestead roof has been ripped off so we’re currently sheltering in the kitchen area, where we expect to remain for the next couple of hours.

“It’s hard to know exactly what the full extent of the damage will be, as we can’t go outside to walk around the station yet. But looking out the windows we’re seeing giant pieces of tin and wood resting on the ground so we know that’s been ripped off somewhere.

“All the gum leaves have been stripped from the gum trees, they look strange and naked.”

Conditions in Exmouth eased around 3pm, with residents venturing outside to see trees, fences and powerlines down amid other debris. Carnarvon residents, hit by wind gusts up to 170 km/h were warned that severe impacts remained possible last night.

Shark Bay, Kalbarri and Geraldton residents were bracing for Narelle’s onslaught last night, albeit a category two cyclone with wind gusts of up to 125km/h.

There were no reports of serious injuries so far.

Premier Roger Cook had earlier in the day described Narelle’s destructive power as a “very confronting situation”, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Federal Government was ready to assist if needed and urged people in impacted communities to “look after each other”.

At 4pm, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services said there had been 42 calls for assistance in the Pilbara and 16 in the Mid West.

“As we get a clearer picture of the extent of the damage, we’ll continue to work with the local governments and communities in the region to determine what sort of support they need for the ongoing impacts,” he said.

Carnarvon’s banana growers feared what was left of their crops from the recent cyclone Mitchell would likely be wiped out by Narelle.

Doriana Mangili, banana grower and business manager for Sweeter, said they would need a miracle to avert a disaster.

Karratha’s Mayor Daniel Scott said the cyclone had skirted past the town, but he was unhappy with a new warning system there.

“We escaped the fury of it really . . . (but) it seems to me, that there’s no systematic approach to making a decision for each warning level,” he said. “We probably should have been on red alert . . . Dampier went on red alert. Dampier is only 20 kilometres away from Karratha.”

Karratha was far from unscathed with residents posing phots of damaged roads.

The cyclone made landfall just before 2pm, crossing the coast 55km south of Coral Bay as a category three system.

Although Narelle was continuing to weaken, the Bureau of Meteorology warned of “very severe impacts” from destructive winds and heavy rain across an area extending as far south as Jurien Bay.

Beyond Dongara it was expected to weaken further to category one and eventually drop below a tropical cyclone strength on the rest of its journey south.

Perth dodged Narelle’s bullet but the metro area will still experience a lot of rain, just not the record amounts that would have fallen had the cyclone’s path not moved inland. Around 30mm fell in Perth on Friday with more than 40mm falling in areas including Swanbourne and Bickley. About 20–40mm is forecast on Saturday.

The Department of Communities last night set up an evacuation centre at Swan Active in Beechboro, as a secondary evacuation centre for people who are unable to attend the Geraldton Evacuation Centre.