Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the power outages across the state’s south-east were the most significant in 10 years.
“We are currently approaching a quarter of a million homes without power,” he said.
Before crashing, the Energex website said more than 250,000 homes were without power in Queensland alone, and nearly 300,000 are without power across the affected areas in NSW and Queensland.
“That’s the single biggest loss we have seen in over a decade, since [Tropical Cyclone] Oswald,” Crisafulli said earlier this morning.
“The work needed to reconnect that is significant … Queenslanders need to know that right now there are damage assessments being done and already crews are being mobilised to get that done.”
When asked whether the Bureau of Meteorology would still categorise the system as a cyclone that crossed South East Queensland given it had been downgraded, Matthew Collopy said it was better to focus on the effect of the weather system.
“It certainly crossed the bay islands as a category 1 system, and then the impacts we saw across the Gold Coast and indeed in Brisbane, and the flooding we’re expecting over the coming days,” he said.
“The exact coastal crossing, times and those features will be analysed in good time, and I would again focus on the impacts and also focus on the rainfall and flooding we’re still expecting.”
