 The most recent tracking from the Bureau of Meteorology does indicate that the area between Innisfail and Cardwell continues to be the most likely point where Cyclone Yahtzee will cross land sometime around 10pm this evening. Gusts in the system are still being recorded at 290 kilometres an hour. This obviously continues to be a Category 5 Cyclone and all indications are that it is continuing to head in the same direction across the coast. The Bureau has dropped their warning in the northern limit of their warning. It was originally most of today at Cape Melville. It's down to Cape Flattery. That means that places like Lockhart River are now out of that danger zone and out of the warning area. The Bureau will from now on do hourly updates on their tracking and their modelling and that will be available on their website. The cans, the system has now moved. You'll recall I told you that their monitoring station at Willis Island had been taken out. The system has now moved into the zone covered by the cans radar system so they are now able to monitor it even more effectively and they will be making hourly updates to the Bureau's website. The Bureau continues to hold grave concerns about the strength of this system for some time after it crosses the coast. It is anticipated that towns like Mount Surprise, Georgetown, Inslee and Croydon could all see serious cyclonic activity from quite early tomorrow morning. Current predictions are that this system could still be at a Category 3 level and hit Georgetown at about 7am tomorrow morning. So just to get a sense of the size and strength and intensity of this system, 450 kilometres inland, more than 12 hours after it hits this coast, will still have Category 3 intensity. We are starting to see the first of what we expect to be a number of power outages. There are now more than 3,000 customers who have lost power in the early beach area. Now this of course is not in the high risk area but they are experiencing winds of close just over the 80 kilometres an hour and some power lines have already been taken down. So I think that gives you a sense that we've got more than 3,000 customers now out of electricity in early beach and that's a very long way from the danger zone around the Cardwell and Innisfal areas. We expect that the number of customers coming off electricity will escalate dramatically over the next couple of hours as those wind gusts really start to accelerate. On our best information we have 10,680 people who are accommodated in more than 20 evacuation centres. The clear message now however is that no one should be leaving home now, the time for movement and evacuation has now passed. People should be sheltering in place wherever they are. We expect to see very dramatic acceleration of wind and wind gusts over the next couple of hours. Evacuation centres do not expect to see more people. It is now time as I said for all movement and evacuation to cease and those messages have been going out in those local areas now for at least the last hour. I'm advised that the streets in all of these towns from Cairns to Townsville are now very, very quiet. Clearly we're now moving into the point where people are bunkering down in their homes. I know that many people have friends and loved ones in North Queensland and all of us are trying to imagine what it must be like for them as they begin this process. For those who are getting into their bunkering down phase I remind you that there are still things you can do to make this an easier process. If you haven't already filled your bathtub with water please do so. You may need it for drinking purposes in the next couple of days. If you haven't already taped your windows please take the time now to do so and take with you into the room in which you intend to take shelter at the peak of this storm. Start taking things that will buffer the room, mattresses, dooners, raincoats. The other advice is make sure that you and your family have proper shoes on. You will need them when you are able eventually to go out of the house and you may not be able to find them after that time. This is I know an incredibly frightening time and for those of us who have friends and relatives in North Queensland I know that you'll be very worried about them. Can I again reassure people everything that can be done to keep people safe is being done. Everything that can be done to make sure we are ready to hit the ground literally at the first available safe opportunity is being done right now. We intend to be there from the very minute that it is possible to be there to make sure that we can keep people as safe as possible in these very difficult circumstances. To all of those people who are listening, to all of those who are in their homes, can I say I know that you are now in the thoughts of every Australian and I hope that you feel that as a great strength in the many hours that are ahead of you. Premier only that I certainly concur with the Premier's comments in relation to those last minute preparations. Some other practical things, shutting the doors within the house actually can provide greater strength to the walls but that has to be also balanced with the concept of being able to relieve pressure in the house by opening windows on the rear side of the house from which the wind is going to strike it. So there are a whole range of those sorts of things that people should be thinking about including those necessities we talked about before having food stuff so that people don't have to leave that solid bunker area. This is really, really important. Making sure you have closed in shoes so that if it worst comes to worst then you've got to get it outside for some absolute reason that your feet aren't going to be cut to pieces. So it's those sorts of things even afterwards by having those things close you won't be searching around for them afterwards. Thanks Premier. We are in loss of life in other cyclones not as large as this one but so many people staying in their homes have at least done any projections on potential loss of life tonight. Look I think the whole message to our community right now and for those people who are bunkering down in this danger period is that if they take the precautions we've asked them to, if they've made those preparations they will reduce the potential for them to suffer serious injury or even death and I think that that's the key message we need to get to them now. Can you guys just go through the storm surge information, the latest storm surge information that you've had? There is, that storm surge information is actually changing and I'd prefer not to mention it at the moment, we're going to discuss it at our next major meeting but certainly the figures that I gave you before were the best information we had at that time. Why is it changing? Why is it changing? Because they're continuing to do the modelling in relation to the timing of this, as you might understand I think the last advice is that the actual eye will cross a little bit later than what they earlier said. So could we, it could be better news in terms of the storm surge? There is some changing information, that's all I'm going to say at this stage. All I can really give you there is that we now have 10,680 people residing in evacuation centres, we've had more than 4,000 people register on the register of people who are out of their homes, some of those will be in that 10,000 figure, others will be just people who are staying with friends who have taken the trouble to register. Can I encourage everybody who hasn't done so, if you are out of your own home, if you're with friends or family or in some other part of another town, please take a moment to register you and yourself and your family, it will just make the job of the police after this event so much easier. You can do it very quickly by phoning 1-300-993191. This is a massive population area and we want to make sure that we are tracking everybody so that we don't have police resources being tied up in chasing missing person reports of someone who is actually safe. What are some reports of losing it? I'm sorry, I haven't been given that information and I'm absolutely sure if that was occurring we'd know. What would you like people to do once the storm is part of that tomorrow morning? Well firstly it's critical to understand again that the eye of this storm is very large and it could take more than an hour before those storm winds start up again so I know I've said it a couple of times but for those who haven't heard it, when you first see calm, please do not go and walk outside because there is another part of the storm to go, particularly those people who haven't been in a cyclone before. The eye of the storm will be a period of calm when the winds will drop. That does not mean the storm is over, in fact within about an hour, very significant winds, the highest possible winds will start up again. When there is however clear evidence that the storm is over completely then we will be giving as many messages as we can when we know a bit more about what has happened to people. Clearly for some people they will find substantial water around their houses and they will need to stay where they are. You need to anticipate that there could be quite a lot of damage and dangerous material around your home or wherever you are staying. I'll invite Ian to say a few more comments on this but we'll be giving people clear messages when we know a little bit more about what it is that they might be walking out into. Certainly, thanks Premier. One of the other issues that we've spoken about over time is the rain event that's going to both precede and follow this cyclone as it crosses a case. It is likely that people will find that there is significant rain occurring even late into tomorrow as a result of the cyclone passing. If you're asking about what advice we give to people be sure that the cyclone has passed that it's just not the eye and we're talking about a period of possibly up to midday tomorrow before the winds abate enough and the rain abates enough that it's actually safe to go outside. So you need to be very careful about when you choose to do that, only go out if it's safe to do so and I think that's the key message that we can give people and then obviously I am sure that people will want to be trying to contact their friends and relatives at that time. The challenge that they're going to have is that with lack of power, with lack of phone, particularly mobile phone assets in terms of the towers may be down, it may be impossible to make those calls initially. People are going to be virtually isolated for some time. The main thing is they need to look after themselves, their family and their neighbours. That's critical. Yes, absolutely. People have to understand that at some point it becomes too dangerous for anyone to be out and about and emergency services personnel aren't immune to that. We actually need them to survive just like everyone else and they're bunkering down, they're taking the same types of precautions whether they're at work or with their families as we've asked the general public to do right now. They will stay in places of safety until after this event and we need them to get out onto the streets immediately. This event has passed when it's safe to do so, to again start providing those absolutely critical services to the public. My message was simply that everyone has to be a first responder in these situations. In other words... In a life-threatening situation, it's not much point in calling, is that the story? Well, the difficulty is going to be that even in a life-threatening situation when someone's ringing up a triple O and they're suffering a life-threatening emergency, a judgement call has to be made at that time as to whether emergency services personnel can actually attend because their lives will be just as a danger as the people are making that call and that is the practical reality of what our emergency services personnel face. How long since the power outages? Power outages, as I've said, have only started in any significant way in the Early Beach area. More than 3,000 customers are offline now. There's been power lines come down there with 80 kilometre winds. As I said, Early Beach, just near Prosopime, is considerably south of this where the major event will occur. So it gives you a sense that this cyclone is going to have an effect across a very broad area. You don't have to be in the danger zone to feel the effects of cyclone yazi. People are going to see their power cut off for some time. And as I said this morning, the Bureau is warning of very high and dangerous swells in the surf all the way down the coast to the Sunshine Beach area. So Sunshine Coast beaches, people need to be very careful in those places. But we are going to see power outages accelerate throughout the afternoon as those winds escalate. And those people at shore perhaps midday tomorrow, is it longer for those places? It would really depend on the force of the cyclone and the speed at which it's moving. We'll be able to do a bit better modelling on that after the Bureau will be, after yazi crosses the coast. But obviously that far inland we won't be contemplating the problem of storm surges. So it'll be a different event. Could you maybe just sum up the actual danger area and then be affected? This cyclone yazi is a huge and deadly storm. It is the largest cyclone to cross the Queensland coast in generations. The last time we had a category 5 cyclone was in 1918. The area where it's expected to cross is between Innisfail and Cardwell, which is about a 100 kilometre stretch of the coast between Cairns and Townsville. Everybody between Cairns and Townsville can expect to experience cyclonic conditions, including winds of over around that 280, 290 kilometres an hour. The area most at risk of significant storm surges are those towns and cities to the south, immediately to the south of where it hits. So Cardwell and then right down the coast to Townsville would be looking at serious possibility of storm surges. But beyond that, the warning area now stretches from Cape Flattery, which is north of Cooktown, down to Serena. And that's the area in which you would expect to see very, very heavy weather conditions, high seas, lots of rain and strong winds. As I said, early beaches right now are getting winds of 80 kilometres an hour. So Blay, are you going to do a lot of this happening? No, we're getting two early updates on the traffic flows. The only traffic that is being reported is south of Townsville. And that's pretty orderly about 800 cars an hour up till midday. But that's quite minor. Right across the rest of the north, very little traffic is moving at all. People have heated the warning and I'm glad for that. Is it fair to say that because it's slowing down and therefore that mighty impact on the storm surge, if it's slowing down will it take long a bit across the coast? And so people will be subjected to the winds belonging? I think you'd have to ask someone with a bit more meteorological calculation ability than either the Deputy Commissioner or I. What we're doing is giving you the best information that we can from the Bureau. Clearly the Bureau will continue to update. And while it has slowed down a little now, as you know earlier today it accelerated, it could do that again. I've spoken to the Bureau about its likely speed and they say you can't rule out it speeding up again. There is a period in which it would expect to slow a little and it's in that period now. Okay.