Two cities in Australia’s far west were suffering from rainfall and high winds from Cyclone Seroja on Monday, which killed more than 200 people last week in East Timor and Indonesia, emergency services said.
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Significant damage was reported in Kalbarri, a town of 1,500 inhabitants and Northampton, a town of less than a thousand inhabitants, in an area not used to tropical storms.
Seroja was accompanied by winds reaching 170 km / h.
Authorities estimated that 70% of buildings in Kalbarri, 670 km north of Perth, had been damaged.
Local media broadcast images of houses with torn roofs and debris littering the streets.
In Northampton, the emergency services of the state of Western Australia also reported “significant damage”.
“The teams are assessing the damage and it is always dangerous to go out,” a spokeswoman told AFP who did not report any immediate injuries.
Cyclone Seroja was a Category 3 storm when it made landfall on Sunday evening. It lost in intensity while progressing in the grounds.
The Meteorological Office said that for some affected localities, it was the first cyclone since 1956.