Cyclone Tracy
| Category 4 cyclone ( Australian scale ) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category 3 cyclone ( SSHWS ) | ||||
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| Emergence | December 21, 1974 | |||
| resolution | December 26, 1974 | |||
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Peak wind speed |
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| Lowest air pressure | 950 hPa ( mbar ) | |||
| dead | 71 | |||
| Property damage | $ 800 million (1974) | |||
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Affected areas |
Darwin , Northern Territory | |||
| Season overview: Tropical cyclone season in the southern hemisphere 1974 |
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Tracy was a cyclone that devastated the Australian city of Darwin on December 24-25, 1974. After Tracy formed in the Arafura Sea , the storm moved south and hit the city with an intensity at least equivalent to level 4 on the tropical cyclone scale . However, there is evidence to suggest that Tracy reached level 5 - the highest level on the scale - after landing on solid ground.
The storm killed 71 people and over 70 percent of Darwin's buildings. About 20,000 of the city's 48,000 residents at the time were made homeless. The majority of the residents were evacuated to Adelaide , Whyalla , Alice Springs and Sydney , many did not return to Darwin. After the storm, the city was rebuilt using modern building materials and technologies. Bruce Stannard described Tracy in the Australian daily newspaper The Age as a "disaster of the first magnitude ... without parallel in Australia's history". (German: "Catastrophe of the greatest magnitude ... without parallel in the history of Australia.")
Course of the storm
On December 20, 1974, the American Earth observation satellite ESSA-8 recorded a large cloud mass, the center of which was in the Arafura Sea about 370 kilometers northeast of Darwin. Ray Wilkie , director of the Darwin Weather Bureau, and Geoff Crane , senior meteorologist , followed up the incident . On December 21, ESSA-8 showed signs that a new circular center was forming at latitude 8 ° south and longitude 135 ° east . Geoff Crane , who was on duty at the time , issued an initial storm warning, describing the storm as a tropical low that could expand into a cyclone.
Infrared images from the American weather satellite NOAA -4 arriving at the meteorological office on the same evening showed a further expansion of the low pressure area and a rotation of the clouds.
The storm was officially classified as a tropical cyclone at around 10 p.m. local time on December 21 , when it was located about 200 kilometers north-northeast of Cape Don and thus about 700 kilometers northeast of Darwin. Over the next few days, "Tracy" moved southwest and passed north of Darwin on December 22nd. A radio report from ABC Radio stated that day that there was no imminent danger to Darwin. However, "Tracy" circled Cape Fourcroy (the western tip of Bathurst Island ) in the early morning of December 24th and was moving in a southeastern direction directly towards Darwin.
In the late afternoon, low-hanging clouds covered the city and let heavy rains fall on it. The accompanying wind gusts steadily increased in strength, so that serious damage between 10 p.m. and midnight clearly showed the residents that the cyclone would not spare the city again. After midnight, "Tracy" crossed Darwin with the eye of the cyclone on the airport and the northern outskirts. Anemometers in Darwin recorded winds of up to 217 km / h before they were swept away. According to unofficial estimates, the speeds have reached up to 300 km / h. Gusts of wind and torrential rains continued until dawn. The hurricane gusts extended to distances of up to 48 kilometers from the center of the storm, which made "Tracy" the most compact of the recorded tropical cyclones.
Preventive action
Darwin was badly damaged by cyclones in January 1897 and again in March 1937, so that the building regulations provided for a basic safeguard against cyclones. However, after twenty years of rapid expansion pre-Tracy, by the end of which, according to an estimate by EP Milliken, about 48,000 people lived in 12,000 homes in the city, many buildings could not withstand the force of a cyclone. Milliken estimates that only about 43,500 people were actually in the city at the time of the disaster.
On the day of the cyclone, most of Darwin's residents mistakenly assumed that Tracy would not cause serious damage to the city, but would rather move north, similar to the cyclone Selma announced earlier in December. Journalist Bill Bunbury interviewed residents some time after the storm and summarized the survivors' experiences in his book Cyclone Tracy, picking up the pieces . It turned out that many residents had hardly taken the storm warning seriously and had been surprised by Tracy.
Effects
Tracy killed 71 people - 49 on land and 22 at sea - and devastated large parts of the city. The original assumption was that 65 fatalities were assumed, but this number was revised upwards in March 2005.
Due to the destroyed infrastructure , the remote location of Darwin and the fact that the press organs were sparsely occupied, if at all, due to the Christmas days, many Australians were not aware of Cyclone Tracy until late afternoon.
The first distress message came from a leadership body of high-ranking officials and police who said Darwin would no longer exist as a city. Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was in Syracuse at the time , but flew to Darwin immediately after learning of the disaster. The government began a mass evacuation of those affected by road and air transport. Australian Armed Forces personnel have been called back from vacation and the entire fleet of the Royal Australian Air Force transport aircraft has been used to evacuate and provide supplies to affected civilians.
Supply bottlenecks
When the storm withdrew, Darwin was already in a medical crisis. Well over 500 patients were treated at Darwin Hospital on Christmas Day, 112 of whom required hospitalization. Both operating theaters were busy. The first victims didn't arrive before 7 a.m. as the roads were blocked and the gusts of wind were still too strong. The operations continued until 1:00 a.m. the following December 26th. The local surgical teams only received reinforcement from a surgical team from Canberra in the late evening of the day. Injured people who would not be able to work again within two weeks were flown out.
Tracy destroyed all official communication channels, such as the radio antennas of the Australian Coastal Radio Service station . The radio amateur Bob Hooper managed as one of the first to establish connection by means of its private radio equipment. Other radio operators could send messages to Perth , Melbourne and Townsville . Shortly afterwards, the radio operators used the radio systems of the ship MV NYANDA , which was lying in the harbor, and for the next five days handled all communications via its CW radio .
The population remaining in Darwin, however, faced a new threat of disease. Around 20,000 homeless people were housed in emergency shelters and emergency centers; there was no electricity, water or sanitation. Volunteers from across the country supported the emergency response. Latrine trenches were dug, water supplies were embarked via tankers and programs for stove immunization were initiated. The army was tasked with clearing the rotten contents from refrigerators and freezers, which was accomplished within a week. The city itself was sprayed with malathion to stop mosquitoes and other pests from spreading.
Reconstruction measures began as early as Christmas Day, when local staff from the Commonwealth Department of Housing and Construction began clearing up rubble and restoring the electricity supply. In addition, in the course of these measures, damaged hydrants were sealed and the city's water and sewage systems were restarted using pumps.
evacuation
National Civil Protection Director Maj. Gen. Alan Stretton and Northern Territory Minister Rex Patterson landed at Darwin Airport on Christmas Day to lead the relief effort. After assessing the situation, Stretton concluded that it was necessary to reduce the affected population to a “safe” number of 10,500. This assessment was based on the advice of Dr. Charles Gurd, the Northern Territory Health Director. About 10,000 people left Darwin in the first two days, but evacuation slowed thereafter. The government then offered victims full compensation for evacuation-related costs. The Age newspaper reported that communication problems at Darwin's Airport on December 28th limited landings to one plane every 90 minutes. At larger airports, the evacuees were received by workers from the Salvation Army and the Red Cross . The Red Cross was also responsible for recording the names and temporary accommodations of the refugees. Some elementary school-age children have been evacuated to cities like Perth in front of their parents.
Stretton also restricted access to Darwin through a permit system that issued permits only to those involved in relief and reconstruction work. This ruled out a premature return of the resettled people. On December 31, only 10,638 people remained in Darwin.
Reports on the extent of the damage prompted communities across the country to raise funds and provide relief. Larger reception centers have been set up in Katherine , Tennant Creek and Alice Springs . Small towns along the Stuart Highway helped refugees who had left Darwin by providing them with food, lodging, technical assistance and gasoline. On the Adelaide River , the small local population provided every refugee holding there with a hot meal. Within 24 hours of Tracy devastating Darwin, the people of Alice Springs raised $ 105,000 in aid to the victims. In Melbourne on December 26th, both teams of a cricket match collected donations on the sidelines. Darwin families have also been given priority in social housing. On December 31, 1974, Stretton returned the city to civilian control.
Aftermath
Reconstruction and Impact
In February 1976, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced the establishment of a reconstruction commission to rebuild the city "within five years". The damage to the city was so severe that proposals were made to implement the city completely. However, the government insisted on rebuilding the city on the same site. In May 1975 Darwin's population was back to 30,000. Emergency shelters, caravans, hotels and even ships of the line were used for housing, as the construction of new apartments had not started by September of that year.
In April of the following year, after criticizing the slow progress of the work, the commission built around 3,000 new apartments in the destroyed northern outskirts. The building regulations have been reformed in order to achieve a quick construction with future safe construction. In 1978 the housing situation in the city was roughly the same as before Tracy. However, about 60 percent of the 1974 population no longer lived in Darwin in 1980. In the following years Darwin was almost completely rebuilt and today shows little resemblance to Darwin of December 1974.
Until 1974 the Northern Territory was administered by a small government in which a federal minister was responsible for the area. However, the cyclone and the response to it exposed problems that led Malcolm Fraser , Whitlam's successor as Prime Minister, to abandon this self-rule in 1978.
The cyclone in pop culture
Because of its severe impact, Tracy is present in Australian pop culture in a way that no other meteorological event shows up. One of the most famous works is the song "Santa never made it into Darwin", composed in 1974 by Bill Cate. The song, which was originally intended to support fundraising, became so popular that in 1983 the Hoodoo Gurus composed the song " Tojo never made it to Darwin", which alluded to the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese in World War II.
In 1986, Nine Network and PBL created the Cyclone Tracy miniseries based on real-life events. The series was written by Michael Fisher, Ted Roberts and Leon Saunders, with Chris Haywood and Tracy Mann as the main characters Steve and Connie.
literature
- Mckay, Gary (2004). "Tracy: The storm that wiped out Darwin on Christmas Day 1974." Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin . ISBN 1-86508-558-8 .
- Milliken, EP (April 1984). "People Who Experienced Darwin Cyclone Tracy: Human Responses in Report on Proceedings of a Research Workshop on Human Behavior in Australia". National Disasters Organization, Australian Defense Department .
- "Mr. Whitlam on the spot. ”(December 28, 1974). The Age . p. 9, 3-5.
- Olds, Margaret (managing editor); Chan, Gabrielle (associate editor); et al. (1999). "Australia Through Time" (7th ed.), Sydney: Random House Publications . Page 441. ISBN 0-091-83815-0 .
- SEMAPHORE Issue 14, December 2004; Sea Power Center - Australia, Royal Australian Navy ; Newsletter of the Sea Power Center - Australia, (occasional series). SEMAPHORE Issue 14 deals with the Navy's response to Cyclone Tracy (December 25, 1974) and the Tasman Bridge collapse (January 5, 1975).
Web links
- Houses destroyed by Tracy in Darwin (picture, 1974)
- Meteorological information ( Memento from November 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Records of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Countdown to impact ( Memento from July 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Texts of Tropical Cyclone Alerts and Warnings ( Memento of May 2, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ "Tropical Cyclone Structure" ( Memento from June 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- ↑ Previous cyclones in Darwin ( Memento from July 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Bill Bunbury: Cyclone Tracy, picking up the pieces . Fremantle Arts Center Press, Fremantle, Western Australia 1994, ISBN 1-86368-112-4 .
- ^ "NT coroner hands down finding on Cyclone Tracy deaths" , Australian Broadcasting Corporation , March 18, 2005
- ^ "Santa Never Made it into Darwin" ( July 6, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive ), Bill Cate