Amid fears of destructive winds, flooding and a billion-dollar bill to come, people were trapped in their bedroom after a large tree blew onto their house, while thousands lost power.
Amid fears of destructive winds, flooding and a billion-dollar bill to come, people were trapped in their bedroom after a large tree blew onto their house, while thousands lost power.
- Updated
- National
- Queensland
- Extreme weather
By Cloe Read and Felicity Caldwell
Updated March 7, 2025 — 10.34amfirst published at 5.00am
Follow our live coverage of Cyclone Alfred here.
The South East Queensland population is on high alert and holding its breath in the final hours as Cyclone Alfred lingers off the coast before it is expected to make landfall by noon on Saturday and cross over north of Brisbane.
The cyclone’s landfall could bring destructive wind gusts of up to 155km/h, with heavy rainfall of 800 millimetres across the disaster period and a damage bill in the billions.
As of 10am on Friday, Queensland time, Alfred was about 160 kilometres east of Brisbane and 140 kilometres east to north-east of the Gold Coast.
Brisbane City Council has updated its flood mapping, with about 850 homes added to the 20,000 expected to be affected across the city as the water rises.
About 40,000 people have lost electricity across South East Queensland, and will be without power until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest, Energex says.
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The category 2 system may weaken as it hits near Brisbane, but the bureau warned Alfred could linger for more than six hours, causing flash flooding and storm surges.
People have been warned to stay home, off the city’s roads.
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Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said some roads in Greater Brisbane were owned by the private sector, who would make their own decisions about closures, but the government hoped to keep roads and bridges “open as long as we possibly can”.
“Because we want emergency services and essential personnel to be able to still drive,” he said.
Many essential services such as schools, public transport and supermarkets have stopped operating, and more than 1000 schools in Queensland were closed until further notice.
When Brisbane and south-east Queensland would start to reopen remained unclear.
Translink reported all public transport services were cancelled “until further notice”, while more than 600 Education Queensland schools would reopen “when it is safe for students to attend”.
Crisafulli said families would be updated after the cyclone passed.
As of 9.30am on Friday, more than 30,000 Gold Coast premises had lost power, with Energex warning that conditions were becoming dangerous for crews.
“The last thing we want to be doing is putting a cherry picker up and the wind blowing it over with crews inside,” Energex’s Danny Donald told 4BC.
“It’s becoming too dangerous for our crews, and like anyone, you wouldn’t want your employer to put you at risk.”
Brisbane has been forecast to cop 200 millimetres of rain in a 24-hour period.
Lord Mayor Schrinner said most of the rain was forecast to come on Saturday, with the tail end of the cyclone.
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“Progressively throughout [Friday] the winds will continue to gear up, we’ll get more rain, and then obviously the potential for trees and branches to come down, power outages throughout the day into [Saturday],” he told ABC Radio Brisbane.
“The scale of this weather system is incredible … unlike the normal storms that come through Brisbane.”
On Thursday, Cape Moreton recorded wind gusts of 96km/h, while there were 80km/h winds at the Gold Coast Seaway and Double Island Point.
Bureau of Meteorology Brisbane manager Matthew Collopy said Alfred was still forecast to hit the outer islands of Moreton Bay at a category 2, but would weaken as it moved towards Brisbane.
As Alfred closes in, residents in the Gold Coast and Redland Bay areas have been warned they could see storm surges up to 1.5 metres if the system crossed at high tide.
Acting Gold Coast Mayor Donna Gates said she was staggered people had not only been risking their lives out on the beaches, but putting emergency crews at risk.
She said the Gold Coast would start to record winds up to 100km/h from Friday.
The Brisbane Airport cancelled flights from Thursday afternoon, with Qantas and Jetstar international flights suspended until at least noon on Saturday, and domestic operations until at least Sunday morning.
In a bid to protect water supply, more than 30 water treatment plants were put in place across the region, fortified with back-up generators.
Asked on 4BC about releases from Wivenhoe Dam, Seqwater chief executive Emma Thomas said that would begin anywhere from within the next 48 hours to 72 hours.
She said Wivenhoe Dam had a drinking water compartment of 1 million megalitres, which was close to full capacity.
“We have another 2 million megalitres of flood storage compartment in that dam and the idea of that is to manage the storage of water in there in conjunction with the releases and then … with what’s happening downstream in the Lockyer and Bremer rivers.”
There had been confusion from residents living in low-lying areas about whether they could park their cars in shopping centres for free to avoid flooding risks. A Scentre Group spokeswoman said parking was free at Westfield shopping centres in the cyclone warning zone on Thursday, but they could not guarantee safe access or storage of cars during or after cyclone.
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