all kinds of bad

Looks like my mum and my sister & BIL, my other sister and BIL, my dad and my two brothers will all cop a direct hit from TC Yasi, in that order.
Mum and Baby Sister live right on the coast, so we don't know if they'll be evacuated yet. We hope so.
Middle Sister lives up on the Tablelands, and Dad and brothers live higher again. They all survived Larry without a scratch, but MS says it was the most terrifying thing she'd ever experienced. And Yasi is expected to be worse. They're calling it a life-threatening event.

For those of you who only saw photos of suburban damage, Larry left the countryside looking like a giant whipper-snipper had been through. Trees were taken out in gigantic swathes. They weren't merely knocked over; they looked as if they'd exploded.
There were no leaves to be seen on them, they'd been completely stripped. And the leaves themselves were shredded. Like confetti. Can you imagine the power of winds like that?

However, surviving the cyclone is not the end of it.
TC Tasha hit on Christmas Day, and they were all without fresh food supplies till after the Brisbane floods started to subside.
When I say "fresh food supplies" I don't mean they couldn't get lettuce. I mean, the supermarkets were not re-stocked because the roads were closed. From Christmas Day on.
There was no milk (even though it's a dairying region. Because the Qld Gvt decided years ago that it would be illegal to sell milk that hasn't been processed. Which is all done Down South. So dairy farmers were pouring their milk down the drain, while the shops had none.)
There was no bread. No meat. Some fruit and veg, whatever had survived the water anyway. No tinned goods. No nappies. No coffee.
NO COFFEE!
No power, or phone, no internet access for days. They relied on other people to txt them and let them know what was happening, or listened out on the radio for news.

I know that the loss of life in Sth Qld was beyond bad. No-one in NQ died in Tasha. There was no devastating flash flooding. But it was still bad, and largely ignored by the media. They aren't getting any money from the mud tax. Many of them will still be required to pay the tax.
It drives me mad that our politicians are so city-centric. They forget, a state doesn't end when you drive out of the city limits.

Anyway, I've spoken to one sister this morning, and have to ring my mum. Going to try and talk her into heading inland. I'd rather they lost their house than their lives.