Cyclone Ita leaves residents north of Townsville stranded by floodwaters

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/14/cyclone-ita-residents-stranded-floodwaters

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Residents in a sugar cane farming town north of Townsville remain stranded by floodwaters as Cyclone Ita loses intensity.

The Queensland premier, Campbell Newman, is touring Ingham on Monday afternoon – a day after the Herbert river peaked near 13 metres, leaving 5,000 people cut off as the Bruce Highway was split in half.

While the river is receding, roads between Cardwell and Townsville are flooded while railway transport has been suspended between Rockhampton and Cairns.

But as Ita moves out to sea, the Bureau of Meteorology has cancelled a storm warning from Sarina, near Mackay, to Yeppoon, northeast of Rockhampton.

Destructive winds of 100km/h are no longer expected to lash those coastal areas.

But Ita has left a trail of destruction, destroying a banana crop at Hope Vale in the state's far north and battering fruit and vegetable farms more than 500km away, in places like Ingham and Bowen, as it headed south.

Ita is expected to weaken from a cyclone to a tropical low late on Monday night and is moving southeast at 23km/h.

The category one storm was 195km northeast of Yeppoon early on Monday morning.

Rising rivers between Proserpine and Mackay are expected to gradually close off roads in the area.

But most of far north Queensland's rivers have peaked and are now easing, the Bureau of Meteorology's flood forecaster, Sue Oates, said.

"The cyclone has moved off the coast now and with that has taken the rain so no significant rainfall is expected now," she said.

Parts of the Fraser and Sunshine coasts have been deluged as Ita mixed with converging winds.

A spokesman for Newman said the premier would fly into Ingham by helicopter early on Monday afternoon from Townsville.