Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
Sydney Begins Massive Clean Up After Storm
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Australia has begun the huge clean up operation needed after its worst dust storm in seven decades.
Sydney’s residents are spending time today cleaning their streets, homes and cars.
Yesterday a dust storm dumped millions of tonnes of dust over New South Wales before heading north to Queensland. Today the skies are clean but the cost of the storm is still being calculated. Wasted working hours, loss of agricultural soil and flight delays are just some of the costly things the storm has affected.
The storm began in the drought stricken centre of the country where tonnes of top soil was sucked up by powerful winds and then blown eastwards.
The haze could actually be seen from space appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia.
People there described waking up to a red glow in their houses, looking out of their windows they described the scene as being like the end of the world. Small children and the elderly were advised to stay at home. Some residents made it to work despite the traffic mayhem and difficulties with public transport.
The BBC quoted Andrew Hawkins, who lives in Northmead, about 20km from the centre of Sydney, as saying, “To see a city of such beauty shrouded in red, was a sight which cannot be described - even pictures fail to capture the eerie nature of the scene which surrounded us this morning,”
By Wednesday evening the dust had settled and the skies had returned to a beautiful blue, but everything was covered in dust. The clean up operation began today and all effected areas are being painstakingly cleaned of the red dust which cloaked the area.
Tags: Australia, Dust, Dust Storm, Red, Storm, Sydney
Posted in Environment | No Comments »