Australia Natural Disasters

At that stage, cyclones were named alphabetically as they occurred. Because of the date it occurred, the meteorologists were up to the letter 'W', and Wanda was simply the name that was chosen. ...

Floods and severe storms with hail are the most common natural disasters in Brisbane. These storms have become increasingly stronger in intensity, with lightning strikes and high, gusting winds causing major damage. Bushfires occasionally occur in the mountains around the city, but these never cause major damage. Cyclones very rarely reach as far south as Brisbane, the last one significant one being in 1974 when "Cyclone Wanda" dumped a huge amount of water in the Brisbane catchment, contributing to massive floods. Having said...

The bushfires in Victoria, dubbed the "Black Saturday" bushfires and commencing on 7 February 2009, killed a known total of 173 people - Australia's worst ever bushfire toll to date. The death toll was initially reported as 210, twelve days after the fires started. However, after police, emergency services and sniffer dogs finished searching through the burnt rubble of whole towns, and after searching missing persons data and examining bushfire victims, this death toll was revised down to 173 on 30 March 2009. ...

The northwest coast of Western Australia is one of the most cyclone-prone areas in Australia. Probably the worst cyclone to hit the region occurred on 22 April 1887 (before cyclones were named), and its most devastated target was a pearling fleet. Thirteen vessels were destroyed and 140 people killed. ...

In February 2010, the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires officially blamed faulty power lines and an incorrect fitting which caused the power lines to fail, for starting the worst of the fires, the one which killed 119 at Kinglake. Arsonists were also partially to blame, though no formal blame has been cast on them. Each place where someone's life was lost was treated as a crime scene, because the authorities said the speed with which the fires started and then took...

Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry was a tropical cyclone that made landfall in Australia in 2006. It started as a low pressure system over the eastern Coral Sea in mid-March, then formed into a tropical cyclone two days later, after which it intensified into a Category 5 cyclone. Larry made landfall in Far North Queensland close to Innisfail on March 20 as a Category 4 with wind gusts reaching 240 km/h (150 mph) and dissipated over land soon after. The total effects of...

Ingredients: *2 oz vodka *4- 5 oz tonic water Preparation: Pour vodka into a highball glass over ice cubes, and fill with tonic water. Stir, garnish with a lime wedge and serve. ...

Cyclone Mahina killed over 400 people. When the cyclone hit on 4 March 1899, it hit a pearling fleet of around 100 vessels anchored at Bathurst Bay, pushing the boats onto the shore or into the sharp rocky reefs of the Great Barrier Reef. This killed 307 people; only 4 sailors survived. The final death toll of between 400 and 410 included at least 100 indigenous Australians, some of whom died when they were caught by the back surge and swept into...

On 12 March 2009, authorities in Victoria announced that the last of the worst bushfires which caused the most death and devastation were under control. However, there were many minor fires that, without significant rain, were expected to continue to burn until the Australian winter, which begins in June. Conditions remained very dry, and lightning strikes caused more fires, but these were easily contained. ...

Lightning occurs as a discharge of energy from charged air masses in clouds, and can be from cloud to cloud or from a cloud to the ground. How Lightning Occurs The first process in the generation of lightning is the forcible separation of positive and negative charges within a cloud or air. The mechanism by which this happens is still the subject of research, but one widely accepted theory is the polarization mechanism. This mechanism has two components: the first is that falling droplets...

Victoria and the southern Australia region had recently experienced one of their hottest summers on record, with a heatwave over parts of Victoria and South Australia. This was on top of a drought which had lasted a dozen years. This had dried up the vegetation, making it like tinder in a fireplace - easily ignited and easily spread. The bushfires took place in mountainous countryside, and fires move much more quickly uphiill. Spot fires also occurred as strong, gusting winds - some hurricane-force...

The Aborigines have nothing to do with the drought in Australia. It is more likely to be the effects of white man and his earlier tendency to clear land for tha sake of greed, rather than considering the long-term effects of his actions. Before European settlers arrived and started their campaign of massive land-clearing, the Australian continent had its regular seasons of wet and dry, but most likely not the debilitating long periods of drought that many regions endure these days. The...

Statistics for bushfires in Victoria, arguably the most bushfire-prone state in Australia, indicate that lightning strikes account for 26% of bushfires. ...

world war II

The difference is in the size of the flying particles. A sandstorm has larger particles, being made up of grains of sand. Sandstorms occur in desert areas, where winds pick up and carry sand particles. These are especially suffocating and dangerous, and the sand can bury people and even houses. Sand storms cause complete remodelling of the desert landscape. Dust storms can occur wherever the soil has been dried and exposed, and tend to occur during hot summers and long drought periods....

The winds started becoming destructive at about 7.30am and by about 11.30am it was safe to go outside, maybe a little earlier. I was there, I was 8 years old and remember gusts of wind started breaking things about 5pm on 24/12/71 and the wind blew hard all night. We lost power for several days. The eye passed directly over Townsville and lasted about 10 to 15 minutes, it was a strange silence after such feroucious winds and then the wind...

The Black Saturday bushfires went for almost five weeks. On 12 March Victorian authorities announced that the last of the worst bushfires which caused the most death and devastation were under control. However, smaller fires continued, controlled, for many months after that. ...

There were numerous factors which contributed to the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009. Ultimately, in February 2010, the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires officially blamed faulty power lines and an incorrect fitting which caused the power lines to fail, for starting the worst of the fires, the one which killed 119 at Kinglake. Arsonists were also partially to blame, though no formal blame has been cast on them. Each place where someone's life was lost was treated as a...

im pretty confident it was for the victorian bushfires in 2009

Though exact figures can never be known, it's estimated that there were up to 400 separate fires on Black Saturday 2009. ...

Brisbane's floods of 1974 were the result of an unusual situation. Whilst the depression which dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain as a result of Cyclone Wanda was unprecedented, it was made more catastrophic by the fact that it had already been a very wet year thourghout the eastern states beforehand. The ground was waterlogged, and simply could not absorb any more water. The floods were made worse by the fact that a huge container ship broke loose from the shipyards, and wedged...

well there was cyclone yasi which happened in Queensland Brisbane. Also there was a disaster in south Australia. ...

The Black Saturday bushfires began on 7 February 2009, and continued for almost five weeks. On 12 March Victorian authorities announced that the last of the worst bushfires which caused the most death and devastation were under control. However, smaller fires continued, controlled, for many months after that. ...

There have been a number of earthquakes in Australia, but generally they do not cause major damage. Many of them are simply seismic activity many kilometres underground, which do not translate to ground-shaking events on the surface. Melbourne and southeastern Victoria, and the region around Canberra, for example, are hot-spots for deep seismic activity, but no earthquake in the area has caused death or significant destruction. Although Australia is not on the edge of a plate, the continent experiences earthquakes because the Indo-Australian plate...

Cyclone Larry, like all cyclones, began as a low pressure system, and it first began to be monitored by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology as a low pressure system on 16 March 2006. It developed into a cyclone two days later, on 18 March. Cyclone Larry then crossed the Queensland coast between between 6:20am and 7:20am on 20 March 2006. ...