Homes unlivable after Queensland battered with hail
Super-cell storms and tornadoes have torn roofs from homes and destroyed crops, leaving a trail of destruction in southern Queensland. Farmers in the middle of harvest season have lost their crops, and are now looking at huge financial losses. Residents who endured the tempest are in shock, including mother Fiona Simpson, whose body was battered by huge hailstones as she tried to shield her baby when they got caught in their car on a highway near Kingaroy.
Ms Simpson posted confronting images of her injuries on social media showing her back, shoulders and arms covered with angry welts and bruises.
“I covered my infant with my body to stop her from getting badly injured,” she wrote on Facebook.
“My entire back, arms and head are badly bruised. I’m just so relieved that my daughter and grandmother are alright.”
The Bureau of Meteorology said the South Burnett region and other parts of the southeast copped the brunt of three severe storms, two of them super-cell storms, with two tornadoes also sighted. At Blackwater, in central Queensland, winds gusted to 144km/h, a wind speed associated with a Category 2 cyclone. The winds tore roofs off homes and businesses and hailstones as large as tennis balls destroyed wheat, barley, melon and stone fruit crops, downed power lines, and cut roads. Queensland Dairy Farmers president Brian Tessmann said the storm’s fury at his Coolabunia farm was like nothing he’d ever seen, with winds tearing the roofs from his home and dairy.
“The roof came off and it was bedlam from there, trying to hold doors shut, and water coming through the ceiling, and things flying through the air. It was quite something,” he told the ABC.
State Opposition Leader Deb Frecklinton said many farmers in her electorate of Nanango suffered enormous losses, having endured similarly devastating storms on Boxing Day last year.