LUCKY ESCAPE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 138, 14 June 1938, Page 8

LUCKY ESCAPE

FAMILY WERE AWAY.

WHIRLWIND WRECKS HOUSE,

ONLY ONE FAaJST A2TECTED. (From Our Correspondent.) NEW PLYMOUTH, Monday. A south-easterly wind of exceptional severity swept Taranaki to-day. It followed a boisterous week-end, in which there was' a liea.vy rainfall. Blizzard conditions prevailed on Mount Egmont with heavy falls of snow.

A whiriwind seriously damaged a farmhouse in Wills Road, Bell Block, near New Plymouth. Fortunately, the occupants were away at the time.

When Mrs. D. Johns and her fouisons. returned to the house they found a scene of wreckage. The front verandah was a heap of timber in the garden, the chimney was a cascade of bricks and the back porch was a mass of tangled iron and wood.

The washhouse was a flattened pile of debris and a spring cart was grotesquely jammed in a hedge. Some hluegum trees in a plantation had their tops twisted off and others were flung many yards by the wind.

The garage was apparently lifted into the air and. the walls were blown many yards, while the iron roof lay canted over a fence. An implement shed looked as if it had been smashed by a, huge hand, and a deeply-rooted hedge was torn out of the ground.

Only Mrs. John's farm was affected, although residents near by heard a loud rushing sound about tho same time.

As rain was pouring through the roof of the house whero it was lifted by wind, Mr. Johns and her family had. to stay with neighbours, Sir. and Mrs. J. H. Street.