Driving through a twister

A truckie driving in Taranaki got more than he bargained for when a tornado crossed his path yesterday morning.

Rick Field was driving his rig near Kaponga when the weather progressively got worse.

Lightning turned to torrential rain, and with it gale-force winds.

However, conditions got worse still and when rain started flying past the truck’s windows Field realised he was in a twister.

‘‘Once I saw the rain was going sideways I thought ‘s... there’s a tornado somewhere’,’’ he said.

Field said when he saw power lines on the ground and trees snapping around him he began thinking about where he could hide from it.

‘‘It is an actual tornado!,’’ he said in a video, adding he would have to move away from the power lines. ‘‘Trees coming down!,’’ he yelled as the tornado hit the truck with debris.

After the twister passed by he said: ‘‘I’ve never been so s... scared in my life.’’

Field said his vehicle had suffered no damage from driving through the tornado just a lot of leaves. As his truck weighed 11 tonnes with fertiliser spreading equipment on the back he said it was pretty stable so the winds didn’t push him around.

There was another vehicle behind him who drove through the tornado too rather than pull over and wait it out.

‘‘I wanted to get away from the powerlines and didn’t know where to go. You don’t know know if it’s behind you or in front so I just kept going to try and get away from it.

‘‘I freaked out when trees started to fall. That’s what got me; I thought ‘this isn’t good’."