BRISBANE, Australia—A man went missing in floodwater, residents were advised to leave their flood-prone houses, and tens of thousands of businesses lost power Friday as the Australian east coast was battered by wind and rain ahead of the country's first tropical cyclone in 51 years.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was expected to reach the Queensland coast north of Brisbane, Australia's third-largest city, early Saturday, according to Bureau of Meteorology manager Matt Collopy.
"It's important to note that the exact track is still uncertain," Collopy told reporters in Brisbane.
Alfred was traveling west at 59 mph with gusts up to 81 mph. Collopy predicted that the storm will lessen when it neared Brisbane.
“This will mean that destructive winds are unlikely for Brisbane itself, but damaging wind gusts to 120 kph (75 mph) are expected and they will develop quickly as the system approaches,” Collopy said.
According to a police statement, the missing guy was driving an SUV that was swept over a bridge on Friday afternoon near the town of Dorrigo in northern New South Wales state, which has suffered some of the greatest rains in recent days.
The driver exited the SUV and hung to a tree limb in fast-flowing water 100 feet from the riverbank, according to authorities.
Police were able to talk with him before he was washed from the tree and submerged. Emergency personnel have launched a search. As rivers rose in New South Wales, at least five people were rescued from floodwaters.
Two people narrowly escaped a large tree falling on their home in the Currumbin Valley in Queensland on Thursday night. The couple were lying only inches from where the tree came to rest in their bedroom, police said.
“Thankfully, both patients sustained only minor injuries,” Queensland Ambulance Service said in a statement.
In Queensland, 46,000 homes and businesses had lost power due to falling trees, mostly in Gold Coast, officials said.
In flood-prone northern New South Wales, 43,000 premises had lost power by early Friday, but electricity was restored to 6,500 of those by afternoon, officials said.
State Emergency Service acting chief superintendent Stuart Fisher said 19,000 people had been ordered to evacuate their New South Wales homes by noon or risk being trapped by floodwater.
Cyclones are common in Queensland’s tropical north but are rare in the state’s temperate and densely populated southeast corner that borders New South Wales.
The Sunshine Coast region north of Brisbane and the city of Gold Coast to the south are tourist destinations renowned for their extensive and picturesque white sandy beaches.
But many of those beaches have eroded away over days by large waves and unusually high tides generated by Alfred.
Alfred is expected to become the first cyclone to cross the coast in the Brisbane region since Cyclone Zoe hit the Gold Coast in 1974 and brought widespread flooding.
The cyclone has been tracking south from the tropics for weeks.
Lithuanian rower Aurimas Mockus, 44, was rowing solo 7,500 miles from San Diego, California, to Brisbane when he became stranded in treacherous conditions generated by Alfred in the Coral Sea last week.
An Australian warship battled 16-meter (52-foot swells) to rescue him Monday 460 miles east of the Queensland coastal city of Mackay, and landed him on Friday in Sydney, where he was reunited with his wife, Sonata Mockuviene. Brisbane is 500 miles south of Mackay by air.
A relieved Mockus told reporters in Sydney he thought he was going to die when he activated his emergency beacon Feb. 28 and waited three days to be rescued.
He described rolling 30 times in his partially enclosed boat “like a cat in a washing machine.”
“My boat was sinking. And old navigation, old stuff is going off. I just have VHF radio. I have broken antennas about,” Mockus told reporters, describing equipment failure.
“I have a lot of problems in my body, and then I think if I lost my mind, if I lost my belief, what I can fight for my life (with)?” he added.
