Nightly News   |  February 02, 2011

Powerful cyclone strikes Australia

The monster core of Cyclone Yasi made landfall on Wednesday, leaving a trail of devastation as it tore across Australia's northeastern coast. Channel 7's Michelle Tapper reports from Cairns.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> back here in cairo, we go quickly now to australia. one of the great places on earth where they're having some of their worst times in memory. this time it's a hurricane, a 200-mile-an-hour category 5 katrina-style hurricane named yasi. they're known, of course, in that part of the world as cyclones, but by any other name this is a disaster on top of the flooding they have had this in the queensland district, as correspondent michelle tapper reports for us tonight.

>> reporter: brian, well, it's been a frightening night here. we prepared for the biggest cyclone ever to hit the australian coast. it arrived around 10:00 last night and it was truly frightening, the sound of it. it sounded like a freight train coming through your room. there are several evacuation centers through town. most of them lost power from around 9:00 last night and i'm told a woman is currently in labor about to give birth in one of them. now, dawn is breaking here this morning. the cyclone has been downgraded. still lots of debris on the roads, lots of trees, lots of rubbish, pieces of metal. people are being warned to stay indoors until police give the okay. but at this point it does appear that we have been spared the worst of this truly terrifying category 5 sigh clocyclone.

>> michelle, thanks. a correspondent for our affiliated network channel 7 in australia.