90-year-old homeowner shaken after roof lifts off
“There were a lot of fences and back yards damaged and trees down. Only one house was damaged which was lucky.”
Kirk Gillam Cobden fire chief
A 90-year-old woman was shaken but unharmed after strong winds took the roof “clean off” her house.
MetService said while it was possibly a tornado, the damage was more likely caused by “straight-line winds” ripping through Cobden, near Greymouth at 8.30am yesterday.
Homeowner Margaret Robertson’s granddaughter Latasha Fensom said her grandmother was not physically harmed after the ordeal.
“She’s shaken of course but she’s fine. She said she was in the lounge just looking out at the weather when everything started falling down around her. She didn’t know what to do,” Fensom said.
A neighbour’s security camera captured the moment the roof came off.
“You see the whole roof just peel off like how you peel the plastic off a milk bottle it just ripped straight off, like clean off in one hit.
“It’s insane,” she said.
Heavy rain at the time soaked through the house and Robertson was being looked after by friends and family.
Cobden fire chief Kirk Gillam said the fire brigade attended to assist in the aftermath.
“There were a lot of fences and back yards damaged and trees down.
“Only one house was damaged which was lucky,” he said.
MetService meteorologist John Law said a line of very active showers and thunderstorms moved northwards up the South Island this morning running through the Greymouth area around 8.30am.
It brought a period of intense rainfall and strong and squally winds, with the station at Hokitika recording a gust of 85kph, he said. “It is likely these squally winds associated with the line of thunderstorms are what caused the damage in Greymouth this morning.”
“While it isn’t impossible that there was some tornadic component to the winds the damage looks more likely to be associated with these strong straight-line winds,” he said.
The weather was expected to improve for the rest of the week as high pressure rebuilds for the second half of the week, Law said.