NU Online News Service, March 23, 11:30 a.m. EDT
The city of Perth in Australia has sustained major damage from a severe storm which the Insurance Council of Australia declared an insurance catastrophe, Guy Carpenter reported.
At this point, the Council said it is too early to place an estimate on the cost or the number of claims from the storm, which hit the city and its suburbs yesterday with winds up to 75 mph causing damage to buildings and vehicles and cutting power to tens of thousands of homes.
Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett declared the city a natural disaster zone and estimated the damage bill will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The report from the New York-based reinsurer's Instrat unit said in addition to tearing winds, the storm was accompanied by golf-ball sized hail and up to 2.5 inches of rainfall.
Officials were quoted as saying the storm's trail of destruction extends from Joondalup down through the western suburbs and further south to Mandurah.
Premier Barnett said the storm was possibly the most severe to hit Perth since May 1994, when powerful winds caused widespread damage and power outages.
Instrat said initial assessments indicated property and vehicles were badly damaged by the strong winds, hail and heavy rain. The State Emergency Service received about 2,000 calls for help as the heavy rain inundated homes and trees and power lines came down on property.
Some 160,000 households lost power after lightning knocked out an electrical sub station, but by today, 100,000 had been reconnected and Western Power said it was aiming to restore the remaining households within 48 hours of the storm.
Windows and glasshouses were reported shattered at The University of Western Australia, where officials said the damage bill would be in the tens of millions of dollars. Elsewhere, the domestic terminal at Perth Airport collapsed, prompting internal flight delays.
Twenty people were said to have been evacuated from the emergency department at Joondalup Hospital in Perth's northern suburbs after parts of the ceiling caved in. Other hospitals were flooded and around 30 schools were damaged, reports said.
Cars had their windshields smashed by the hailstones, 150 sets of traffic lights went blank and roads flooded. More than 100 people had to be evacuated from an apartment block on Mounts Bay Road near King's Park in Perth's CBD after the heavy rain caused a landslide, Instrat said.
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