Bob Leicester is being remembered as a hero 50 years after Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin. Leicester played a key role in rebuilding the city and advocating for improved building practices to withstand cyclones.
Bob Leicester , pictured, was instrumental in the re-building of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy . It’s 50 years since Cyclone Tracy and he is being remembered as one of the heroes of the aftermath. Bob Leicester , pictured, was instrumental in the re-building of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy . It’s 50 years since Cyclone Tracy and he is being remembered as one of the heroes of the aftermath.
Wind gusts reached 217km/h before debris destroyed the Bureau of Meteorology’s measuring equipment. There are estimates the speeds may have reached 300km/h. Instead, they huddled inside as roofs were torn off and windows exploded. They emerged in the morning to “massive devastation”. Canberra, meanwhile, was in a darkness of its own. Communications were down for five days, with only patchy information getting through.
“They were evacuating the city,” Leicester says. “Most people were out by the time I got here.” He and a few others were dropped at the airport late at night and pointed towards town. They looked at about 2,700 houses and the myriad ways in which they had failed. No type of housing was built to withstand those winds, he says.The work of the CSIRO group before and after Tracy transformed the nation’s building codes, improving safety standards.
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