‘A very Jewish cyclone’
LEADING Aircraftman George Koulakis of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) spent Cyclone Yasi in special accommodation on the base at which he works in Townsville.
LEADING Aircraftman George Koulakis of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) spent Cyclone Yasi in special accommodation on the base at which he works in Townsville.
As second-in-command of the shelter, the Jewish RAAF member spent the night tending to the needs of officers’ families, as well as another Jewish family he had invited to stay in the shelter.
Unbeknown to those families, he was worrying about the state of his own home, which was thankfully left undamaged.
“They just look to you, you’re in uniform, you’re in charge, and they come to you with everything and it’s very difficult on a personal level to look after them, keep everything flowing. But in your mind all you’re thinking about is your home and this massive monster that’s hitting it,” he said.
Before the cyclone hit, Aircraftman Koulakis spent the day busily contacting Jewish families around Townsville warning them and ensuring they were safe.
“My priority was the immediate Jewish families that come to my house for Shabbat,” he said.
“For me, getting the Jewish families in was a big thing because most of those families are here in Townsville short term. They’re not wired up to be thinking cyclone [whereas] this is a way of life for us.”
Aircraftman Koulakis lived through Cyclone Tracy as a child in Darwin. “There was a lot of similarity between Cyclone Yasi and Cyclone Tracy,” he said. “When I was running the shelter here, it was playing on my mind constantly.”
He added that it was eerie watching the storm in silence from the safety of the cyclone accommodation.
“To be in there and to see it was the most surreal experience you could imagine. It really was like watching a silent movie.”
Cyclone Yasi was a much louder experience for retiree Richard Joachim, who lives in the Cairns suburb of Yorkeys Knob.
Joachim said the winds were so strong they ripped his mezuzah off his doorpost.
During the storm he used leftover Chanukah candles for light. “It was a very Jewish cyclone for us,” he joked.
“The house was shaking like it was in an earthquake,” he said. “The lightning strikes were so frequent, it wasn’t individual bolts, but it was like a curtain of lightning.
“It was actually like a religious experience standing there surrounded by these vast winds, this long low moan like a shofar and all the lightning.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
Aircraftsman George Koulakis after 36 hours without sleep
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