Exmouth isolated and inundated in wake of Cyclone Narelle as Chevron works to restart stalled gas plants

Exmouth in Western Australia has been ‘devastated’ by Tropical Cyclone Narelle. Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP View image in fullscreen Exmouth in Western Australia has been ‘devastated’ by Tropical Cyclone Narelle. Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP ‘Entirely wiped out’ crops, buildings destroyed and weeks of recovery as cyclone damage assessed Critical Western Australia agriculture region counting cost of brutal cyclone as flooding risk persists for low-lying communities Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast An agricultural region that supplies about 60% of Western Australia’s fresh winter produce is assessing damage as authorities continue work on Sunday to restore power to a popular tourist town hit hard by Cyclone Narelle. The food-bowl region near Carnarvon, about 900km north of Perth, provides 80% of of the state’s bananas. Meanwhile, flooding risk remains in the state’s low-lying communities. Meanwhile, four structures have been confirmed destroyed and 27 damaged in Exmouth, a holiday town about 1250km north of Perth, though authorities expect those numbers to climb as more than 2000 homes are assessed. Power had been restored to 250 homes in the area on Sunday morning, and emergency crews had arrived to help restore services to the remainder. The local farm and produce store, Bumbak’s, was one of the properties impacted by the storm as it tore down the WA coast. “The corn has been absolutely flattened, the tomato seedlings have been wind blasted, they won’t be able to produce anything,” the store’s owner, Jo Bumbak, told AAP on Sunday. Bumbak said a nearby avocado farmer had been “entirely wiped out” with fruit strewn across the ground. Mature trees on banana plantations had been badly damaged, Ms Bumbak said, but younger plants had survived remarkably well. Emergency services warned the area’s residents that the Gascoyne River, which cuts through the state’s inland to Carnarvon, was due to flood on Sunday afternoon, and they might be cut off. Recovery and clean-up work following the storm was likely to take weeks, the emergency services commissioner, Darren Klemm, told reporters. After lashing coastal communities with 250km/h winds and dumping a year’s worth of rain in a day, the now-subtropical low headed offshore overnight after weakening as it tracked inland east of Perth. Earlier, it left a trail of destruction in parts of the Pilbara and North West Cape, including Exmouth, which remains largely isolated. View image in fullscreen Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP View image in fullscreen Homes were completely destroyed on ‘harrowing night’. Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP “There’s pretty much devastation everywhere you look,” a local man, Craig Kitson, told AAP. Exmouth’s few thousand residents bore the brunt of the system, which first crossed the coast in Queensland more than a week earlier. Since then, it has cut a path across Australia’s north before tracking down the WA coast. Roofs were torn off buildings in Exmouth, power was lost, homes were flooded, and about 50 people had to abandon a local evacuation centre when it sustained wind damage. Authorities and the regional energy provider have been working to restore power to customers in Exmouth and Carnarvon still experiencing outages, with additional workers called out to support local crews on Sunday. Work is also under way to repair damaged water infrastructure. The town’s airport was extensively damaged, while the main road into town has been closed due to the impact of flooding. View image in fullscreen Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP Although he lost a fence and spent the night under a leaking roof, Kitson counts himself lucky. View image in fullscreen ‘There’s pretty much devastation everywhere you look’ Photograph: Violeta Jahnel Brosig/AAP “It was definitely a harrowing night there for a lot of people,” Kitson said, adding some homes had been completely destroyed. “Some people’s lives have been drastically changed.” Narelle also continues to exacerbate the global energy supply crunch, disrupting production at two of Australia’s biggest liquefied natural gas plants run by Chevron and Woodside. Woodside Australia said on Sunday that Narelle was still interrupting production at the company’s Karratha gas plant, the onshore processing facility for the North West Shelf project. “We have commenced remobilising our workforce to some of our offshore facilities, and inspections will inform startup processes and timing,” a company spokesperson said in a statement, adding that “production at the North West Shelf project would recommence once it is safe to do so.” Chevron Australia said it was working to restore production at its Gorgon and Wheatstone facilities after outages. Located on Barrow Island, north of Exmouth, Gorgon is Australia’s largest liquefied natural gas export facility, producing 15.6m metric tonnes a year. Wheatstone operates two processing units, producing 8.9 million tonnes annually. Explore more on these topics Tropical Cyclone Narelle Australia weather Western Australia news Share Reuse this content