Classroom Roof Lifted By High Winds At Levin

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30184, 16 July 1963, Page 14

Classroom Roof Lifted By High Winds At Levin

(New Zealand Press Association) LEVIN, July 15. Children ran screaming from a Levin North school classroom block at 1.30 p.m. today when part of the roof was torn off in high winds.

Seventy children were in the two-classroom prefabricated block when the whole roof lifted and crashed down again. Mr S. Hinde, who teaches a class of 40 standard 3 children, said later: “The roof lifted right off, then part of it ripped away. I told all the children to get under their desks because I thought the wall might collapse.”

In the next classroom, Miss R. E. Phillips was teaching 30 children. The section of roof which came off, crashed down on the roof over their heads. It smashed a hole in the ceiling, and scattered the floor with malthoid. “AH the children screamed, then they ran to Mr Hinde's room,” said Miss Phillips. “They were all crying, and I was scared myself. Mr Hinde told them all to get under desks,” None of the childen was injured but they were all sent home.

The building was erected at the school in 1954 as a temporary classroom. Heavy rain and high winds again swept other North Island districts today. A storm in the Thames Valley this morning cut highways for a short time as flooded creeks burst their banks. A cloudburst in the hills

caused a creek to rise and sweep through the Wainui seaside settlement, five miles north of Gisborne.

At Tokomaru Bay 2J inches of rain fell in an hour between 12.30 p.m. and 1.30 p.m. The Maungahauini bridge was stripped of 25 feet of its side rails by a drifting tree. Further up the coast the Kaiaua Beach bridge was swept out to sea.