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Category five Cyclone Larry is tearing homes apart as it crosses the far north Queensland coast, with police unable to leave their station to answer desperate calls for help.
The most destructive part of the huge storm has made landfall near the town of Innisfail, south of Cairns, unroofing homes with wind gusts reaching 290kph.
Larry's winds are at least as strong as those Cyclone Tracy unleashed in Darwin in 1974, in a storm that killed 71 people and destroyed more than 70 per cent of the city's buildings, leaving over 20,000 people homeless.
Innisfail police have been inundated with calls from residents whose homes are "literally crumbling around them".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/homes-destroyed-as-larry-hits/2006/03/20/1142703246021.html