Homes without power and buildings damaged across Top End after Tropical Cyclone Fina brings gales and torrential rain | Northern Territory

Top End residents are preparing to go into clean-up mode after a night of damaging winds and heavy rain from Tropical Cyclone Fina.

Fina brought down trees, damaged homes and knocked out power in many places in Darwin and surrounding areas, with wind gusts of 195 km/h near the center of the system and sustained winds of 140 km/h. It also brought heavy rain to Darwin airport, with 168.6mm of rainfall in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday.

The storm was the strongest to approach the Northern Territory capital since Hurricane Tracy devastated the city in 1974, but there were no reports of serious injuries or damage as of Sunday morning.

Households in Darwin and surrounding areas, where winds reached 107 km/h, were asked by emergency authorities to stay in their homes or emergency shelters. The warning was still in effect Sunday morning.

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Fina, a Category 3 system, brought devastating winds and heavy downpours to remote communities in the Tiwi Islands, then to Darwin and surrounding areas on Saturday and Sunday.

It was a noisy and in many cases sleepless night for Darwin residents as heavy winds rattled, crashed and shook everything in their path and rain poured down on the streets.

Emergency shelters were opened in Darwin, near Palmerston and neighboring rural areas, and people were asked to bring their own bedding and food.

Part of the ceiling at the Royal Darwin hospital collapsed on Saturday but no one was injured, NT Police’s Emma Carter told ABC Radio Darwin.

PowerWater reported power outages in Darwin and coastal areas and said in a statement that its teams had begun assessing damage and would work to restore power “as soon as it is safe to do so”.

Optus’ Northern Territory managing director Dave Morissey told the ABC on Sunday morning that 15 mobile sites were offline, with technicians trying to get them back online and eight mobile sites were running on generators.

Telstra was also reporting widespread outages affecting some mobile, NBN and landline services in the NT; Some mobile base stations were expected to be out of service by Monday, and many internet and phone services in Darwin were predicted to be out of service by Tuesday evening.

The Bureau of Meteorology reported early on Sunday that Fina would move away from the coast, but said a warning area for Wadeye was still in place as far as Cape Hotham, including Darwin, Tiwi Islands, Dundee Beach, Milikapiti, Pirlangimpi and Wurrumiyanga.

late in the morning I follow 110 km west of DarwinIt is moving west-southwest at 10 km/h. The NT government said it was still classified as a category 3 hurricane and could intensify to category 4, but the very destructive core of the storm was well off the north-west Top End coast.

Fina was forecast to remain a severe tropical cyclone on Sunday as it moved southwest across the South Timor Sea and begin weakening as it approached north of the Kimberley coast on Monday. The storms were not expected to extend to Wyndham or Kununurra.