Cyclone Yasi batters Queensland – no known deaths

Exhausted residents emerged to check the damage after Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi hit land at around midnight, packing winds of up to 290 kilometres (180 miles) per hour, in a region still reeling from record floods.

Officials and locals said 90% of the main street in the small Queensland town of Tully, south of Cairns, had "extensive damage", while the coastal community of Cardwell also suffered "significant devastation".

But regional hub Cairns, a centre for foreign tourists visiting the Great Barrier Reef, was spared Yasi's worst with problems largely restricted to fallen trees and minor damage to buildings.

No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported, due to what officials said was good planning, strong public warnings and the fact that the storm veered suddenly southwards, away from Cairns, home to 122,000 people.

However, Queensland State premier Anna Bligh warned that a full picture was yet to emerge from a group of worst-hit towns, where communications and road access remained difficult.

Near the storm's "ground zero", families had cowered as roofs were ripped from homes, and some 10,500 people huddled in evacuation centres as the storm raged with a roar akin to a jet engine.

Power blackouts darkened 177,000 homes across the region, including the city of Townsville, as emergency workers struggled their way into the worst-hit towns, besieged by large pieces of wreckage plus fallen trees and power lines.

Major roads were closed by flooding or storm debris and telecommunications were patchy.

The maximum-category five storm, reportedly large enough to cover most of the United States and with winds stronger than Hurricane Katrina, follows widespread flooding that left much of Queensland under water.

Authorities warned residents to stay in their homes to avoid a second storm surge along the coast and fallen power lines, as strong winds howled. Yasi was downgraded to category one but threatened more towns as it blew inland.

The storm's size and power dwarfed Cyclone Tracy, which hit the northern Australian city of Darwin in 1974, killing 71 people and flattening more than 90% of its houses.

It was also twice the size and far stronger than the category four Cyclone Larry that caused Aus$1.5 billion ($1.5 billion) of damage after hitting agricultural areas around Innisfail, just south of Cairns, in 2006.

Queensland, a mining, farming and tourism hotspot, is still battling to recover from floods which left about three-quarters of the sprawling state under water, even inundating large parts of its capital, Brisbane.

But Professor John Merson, head of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, warned more such disasters were likely as climate change warms up waters and fuels extreme weather.