Eleven homes were damaged after a tornado hit a neighbourhood in Waitara overnight.
MetSerivce recorded strong wind gusts in the Taranaki areas, reaching about 130kph, along with intense downpours between 20-30mm per hour.
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Sebastian and Jessica Murrihy were home with their three children, aged three, six and eight, when the tornado ripped through their house at midnight.
“It was a huge noise,” Jessica said, adding that it sounded like intense thunder, except “more terrifying, it felt like the house was shaking”.
They got up to check on the trampoline, and Sebastian said he looked out the window to see their fence totally flattened.
“I was pretty worried; I had never seen the neighbour’s house so close before.
“I came outside to talk to the neighbour, and he said, ‘Oh, by the way, you have a hole in your roof.’
“We ran round the other side [of the house] and saw a really big hole and realised it was over the kid’s bedroom and thought we need to move them,” Sebastian said.
“They slept through it!” Jessica said.
Their neighbour, Shirleen Patterson, had her five-year-old granddaughter in bed with her when she heard the “peeling and cracking” of tin, followed by a “bang” around midnight.
The tornado had “ripped off the roof” and demolished her greenhouse.
“I covered her, then got out of bed and took her to the other end of the house where it felt more secure. This house is 100 years old, so it’s got good bones.
“She was my first priority, to get her out of there.”
Patterson said she taught with Jessica at St Joseph’s school in Waitara, and it is “shocking that [the tornado] comes through and gets both of us in the same night, go figure”.
Another homeowner, Susan Duncan, said that she initially thought the noise she heard at midnight was the wheely bins, “I’ll just deal with it tomorrow”.
“But then my dog wouldn’t stop barking, he just kept on going off. So I came out, and I saw all these trees down… I was sorta disoriented, thinking, ‘What’s going on?'”
Her daughter’s car, parked on the side of the road, had its windows smashed out, and Duncan said it appeared the vehicle had been picked up and skidded across the grass.
“I was speaking to the lady over there, and she said that the side mirror is in her shed. Crazy, just crazy!
“I’m glad we are all so safe, it could’ve been worse.”
Carey Clow described seeing debris from his and his neighbours’ homes thrown a hundred metres around a paddock when he instigated the damage this morning.
“It wasn’t until a few minutes later that our daughter-in-law called, who lives here, and said ‘come round! The pergolas gone!’
“The bolts are still in the deck. My son-in-law will be very pleased to know he did a good job with the bolts.”
FENZ reported no injuries and responded with two crews from Waitara and a support vehicle from New Plymouth.
