Mangled sheds and broken doors

A trail of damage left in the wake of the remnants of Cyclone Debbie saw some Taranaki residents wondering if a tornado had ripped through the region.

Winds of more than 100km/h followed days of heavy rain, and tore apart the door of farmer Angeleigh Young’s tractor shed at Kina Rd, Oaonui, in the early hours of yesterday morning, leaving a twometre long gash in the metal. The blast also ripped open the door at the other end of the building.

The shed is only 50 metres away from their family home and Young said the sound of the wind throwing dust and pebbles against the windows had woken up one of her children around 1am.

‘‘I’ve never heard it that roaring, it was actually pretty scary to be in an old school house and have it rattling like that,’’ said Young, who estimated the wind speed could have been more than 150km/h.

The storm also whipped wires off some of the fences and knocked down posts, and a power cut blew out the farm’s main pump.

‘‘We’ve never had something like this, I’ve lived here for 40 years and we’ve never had this happen,’’ Snapper Young, Angeleigh’s motherin-law, said.

The Taranaki Regional Council weather station at Cape Egmont recorded wind gusts of up to 115kmh just after midnight yesterday.

The average wind speed was recorded at 80km/h.

On Rama Rd, near Kaupokonui, the mangled remains of a shed lay in a paddock around 20 metres away from where it had stood only hours previously.

The concrete blocks holding it down had been ripped out of the ground and dragged along with it, leaving behind a pile of large hay bales that had been blown over and a car, which used to be parked in the shed, out in the rain.

The wooden pillars had been snapped like matchsticks and the corrugated iron was twisted and bent by the force of the wind.

Students at Opunake High School found themselves with a day off after the high winds damaged building work on the site.

Principal Simon Fuller said they were in the process of replacing the roof and the shrink wrap that had covered the construction site had been blown away.

He said they hadn’t been able to fully tidy up by 8:30am and had decided to tell the students to stay away as a precaution. ‘‘They’ll be studying at home.’’

Ian Armstrong, chairman of the Opunake Community Emergency Volunteer Group, said the area was sodden yesterday morning but he had not heard of very much damage.

‘‘We’ve got off very lightly, quite frankly. We had a little over 100mls of rain yesterday but I can’t check the TRC site this morning because the power is still off.’’

Kapuni resident Sheldon Izzard said the wind had been ‘‘insane’’.

‘‘I reckon we had a tornado, it was ripping around our house like I’d never seen before,’’ she commented on Facebook.

‘‘All our outdoor furniture is in a cosy circle now and it completely blew in our garage door.’’

Rebecca Poulsen, who lives near Manaia, said she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been a tornado as she was woken up by strong winds.

‘‘Gardens were a bit blown around, big roller door blew in on farm shed and cowshed has a hole in wall where Clearlite blew off,’’ she commented.

‘‘Power was off just after 1am but was on by 5am. Minor damage considering the strength of the wind.’’

Nadine Meynell agreed that it was rough in Manaia. ‘‘I saw uprooted trees and a tramp on someone’s roof,’’ she said.

‘‘My plum tree has been split in half. Would not surprise me at all if it was a tornado.’’

However, MetService meteorologist Brian Mercer said there had been no reports of a tornado in the area and it was highly unlikely with the weather conditions at the time.