Tornado Rips Through Farms

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30629, 21 December 1964, Page 1

Tornado Rips Through Farms

GVeic Zealand Press Association!

AUCKLAND, December 20.

A tornado ripped across dozens of farms at Matangi and Bruntwood late on Saturday night, leaving in its wake wrecked barns and hundreds of uprooted trees.

The tornado came near the end of an electrical storm. Power and telephone circuits were disrupted and the television translator on Mount Te Aroha was off the air for more than two hours, until power was restored.

Trees of 3ft to sft in diameter were uprooted. Others whose trunks were 18 inches thick were snapped off. Acres of paddocks were strewn with branches. Crumpled sheets of corrugated iron wrenched from farm buildings were twisted into the wire fences.

Mr P. Veelenturf, of Matangi, lost the roof of his milking shed, and his hayshed was blown away, leaving 400 bales of hay exposed to heavy rain. When the tornado struck he was at home with his wife and three young children. Mr Veelenturf said today: “It was terrific and frightening. The lights went out. My wife called out that it was an earthquake. We heard iron and wood banging along the side of the house and there was a crash as the chimney came down.” A large walnut tree in front of Mr Veelenturf's house was blown over, blocking the road. Traffic officers and linesmen were quickly at the scene.

At the home of Mrs V. A. Sharp, on the Bruntwood-

Tamahere road, about a third of the corrugated iron was stripped from the house roof, and the front veranda was wrenched off.

Mrs Sharp also lost a haybarn and more than a dozen big trees. On Mr J. M. Perceval’s pig breeding farm at Hautapu. falling trees demolished a row of pig pens and killed a sow, scattering her litter. Many other farms suffered roof damage and had trees blown over. At the height of the storm Hamilton had a brief hailstorm, with hailstone up to half an inch in diameter. Rotorua Storm There was widespread disruption of power and telephones in the Rotorua district at the week-end after heavy storms. Lightning blew out “some hundreds” of transformers and high tension fuses in the Rotorua electrical supply industry, said Mr J. H. Badham, supply superintendent. All the power was restored by noon today, but at 4.30 p.m. a severe electrical storm caused further widespread power failures. Linesmen were still working late tonight.