Struggling to see the storm’s funny side
A bunch of comedians have found themselves to be tenants of a tree house after a winter storm overdelivered this week.
The group of five have been homeless since they watched a huge heritage tree tumble towards them.
A night of weather mayhem blasted Auckland on Tuesday with winds gusting up to 213km/h in the Manukau Heads.
The wind tore roofs from houses and uprooted trees that came crashing down on over 100 power lines across the region. At its peak 180,000 homes were without power.
Joel Hansby, 24, was upstairs taking photos of the branches falling off a nearby tree with his flatmates when disaster struck. “It was a huge crack then it started coming down.
“I tackled one of the guys out of the way, which he said wasn’t necessary in retrospect.
“It must have hit a beam in the roof and stopped it coming into the room we were in. It just sat on the house.”
The power cut out and the flatmates — Savanna Calton, Ray O’Leary, Ben MacGougan and Josh Davies — were plunged into darkness. They tried to call 111 but “it sounded like Auckland was in a bit of a hellhole”, Hansby said.
It wasn’t the first time the 120-yearold heritage tree had attracted attention, Hansby told the Herald.
“It was very big. We had a lot of people knock on our door telling us how beautiful they thought the tree was. Taking photos of it. People liked it . . . I liked it until yesterday.”
The group have spread out around Auckland sleeping on friends’ couches and in spare rooms. The name of their flat Facebook group has already been changed to “the treehouse”.