Lucky escape from tornado

A man cheated potential death when sheets of iron came blowing down a valley as a tornado ripped through Taranaki yesterday afternoon.

Taranaki man Mike Green was in his workshop when he heard the door rattle with gusts of wind pounding the building.

Curious about what was happening, he looked through the window and saw a sheet of iron smash into a resident’s ute.

The workshop’s doors were rattling and shaking — it looked like they were going to get blown in, Green said. “I turned out the window and saw the iron going straight past. I raced outside when I realised what was happening.

“Some of the roofing iron from Metro Fires 600m down the road came blowing past, with one destroying my wing mirror on my car.”

Green ran outside and saw his wing mirror had been smashed by the flying iron sheet. But it wasn’t until he looked inside another resident’s ute that he realised a man was inches away from serious injury.

“The ute that was in front of me, there was a guy in there sheltering from the rain. He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the eye of the tornado coming from behind and the iron coming towards us.

“He ducked down in his vehicle because he thought he was going to lose his head, and the iron bounced off my wing mirror and smashed into the back of his ute. He thought thatwasit...”

Two buildings were damaged when the tornado struck on Oropuriri Rd in New Plymouth’s northeast, including Metro Fires which lost its roof and a large number of iron sheets.