Queensland’s cruel Summer continues with news that Cairns is at threat from the 500 km-wide monster Cyclone Yasi:

Thousands to be evacuated as Cairns is warned of flooding from powerful Cyclone Yasi

The Courier-Mail has produced a useful and frightening comparison of Cyclone Yasi with Cyclones Tracy and Larry, which were much smaller in area at 50 km and 100 km wide respectively:

29,000 face mandatory evacuation in Cairns as city braces for a pounding from Cyclone Yasi

Cyclone Yasi’s closest comparator is the 640 km-wide Hurricane Katrina – a natural disaster for which the Federal Government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation was completely unprepared. Let’s hope our own authorities have studied the lessons of that debacle.

In other news today, it appears Cairns is just starting to emerge from the economic slump it has experienced since the financial crisis, which brought a large decline in tourist numbers and an unemployment rate which got up around 14%. The Cairns Post reported this morning (Cairns’ economy a slow road to recovery):

THE economy of Cairns is recovering but it’s proving to be ‘a long slow haul’, a new report says.

The January 2011 CairnsWatch report says improving tourism industry conditions and the reduction in unemployment are taking a long time to filter through to rest of the city’s economy, with the construction sector, in particular, still weak.

Business leaders say the economy is stabilising but Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland Far North Queensland policy chairman Brett Moller called on the State and Federal governments to release their funding for promised projects so the work could get started, including the $150 million Bruce Highway upgrade.

Obviously, Cyclone Yasi is very bad news for Cairns and Queensland. It must now be a major concern of the Government’s that the rebuilding efforts – from the floods and what will be required from this cyclone – will be vigorously competing with each other for skilled tradespeople and engineers. With such strong competition for scarce skills, the economic cost of rebuilding Queensland could blow out massively. That temporary levy could be with us for some time yet.