Emilia Vakko shows her wrist band with an ID issued to all displaced residents in Cairns. (AFP)

Cairns (Australia), Feb. 3 (Reuters): One of the most powerful cyclones on record slammed into Australia’s coast today, threatening tourist cities with powerful winds and raising the danger of deadly storm surges.       

Cyclone Yasi, packing winds of up to 300km an hour near its core, come ashore along hundreds of kilometres of northeast coastline late today.

Mines, rail lines and coal ports have been shut, with officials warning the storm could drive inland, hitting mining areas of Queensland state struggling to recover from devastating floods. Queensland accounts for about a fifth of Australia’s economy and 90 per cent of its steelmaking coal exports.

Shortly after midnight, a bureau of meteorology spokesman told television the eye of the cyclone was crossing the coast close to the tourist town of Mission Beach.

“We are going to see about three to four hours of very destructive winds as it crosses the coast,” the spokesman, Rick Threlfall told ABC Television. State Premier Anna Bligh said the force of the cyclone was unprecedented.

“I am not going to sugar-coat this. It’s going to be a tough 24 hours ... We are still in for the worst,” Bligh told a briefing.

“Without doubt, we are set to encounter scenes of devastation and heartbreak on an unprecedented scale. This cyclone is like nothing else we’ve dealt with before as a nation,” she said earlier.

Yasi is a maximum-strength category five storm and has drawn comparisons with Hurricane Katrina which wrecked New Orleans in 2005.

“This is the scariest thing ever,” a caller who identified himself as Craig told a Queensland radio.

“I can hear (roof) sheeting lifting. I went through Cyclone Larry (in 2006) in the same house, and it was nothing like this. Mate, it’s huge, it’s massive.”

Engineers warned that Yasi could even blow apart “cyclone proof” homes when its centre moved overland, despite building standards designed to protect homes from a growing number of giant storms.        

Authorities said 150,000 homes were without power.       

The storm threatens to inflate world sugar, copper and coal prices, forcing a copper refinery to close and paralysing sugar and coal exports. It even prompted a major mining community at Mt Isa, almost 1,000km inland, to go on alert.

Global miners BHP Billiton and Peabody Energy have shut several coal mines in Queensland ahead of the cyclone, an official for the union representing Queensland coal miners told Reuters. Bligh said the cyclone could batter the state for up to three days as it moved inland and slowly weakened. She said 61,000 homes had lost electricity.

She said a giant nine-metre wave had been recorded off the coast, highlighting what is likely to be the greatest threat to life: surges of water metres above normal high tide levels in the worst-affected coastal areas.

Selwyn Hughes, turned away from a shopping centre taken over as a shelter late on Wednesday, stood with his family outside in the car park and said his only comfort was in numbers. “There are so many of us here. Surely they have to do something, find somewhere safer to move us to before it arrives,” he said.