Wind damages school roof

Press, 22 September 1983, Page 1

Wind damages school roof

A gust of wind ripped part of the roof from a building at the Darfield High School as a nor’wester buffeted areas north of Timaru yesterday. The airstream, typical of this time of year, sent the temperature 'at Christchurch Airport to a maximum of 24deg., just o.7deg. short of the September record for the airport set in 1955.

Mount Hutt, which is susceptible to nor’westers, recorded a gust of 191km/h at 3 p.m. In Christchurch, the Weather Office at the airport measured gusts of lOOkm/h at 11.35 a.m. and 1.15 p.m. This compares with a gust of 173km/h recorded during the gale of August 1, 1975.

Mr R. M. Ryburn, the principal of Darfield High School, said that roofing iron the length of about one and a half classrooms was suddenly ripped from the downwind side of the building about 11.30 a.m. “By the sound of things it was just a sort of abrupt thing. The people in the classroom reported a sudden bang. It went off very explosively, suddenly,” he said.

“The iron was flung about 20 metres and wrapped round the corner of a neighbouring building.” Mr Ryburn said that none of the fifth-formers and sixth-formers in the room were injured.

“The teacher told them to get under their desks and then when it was safe to go outside they were moved to the school hall.

“As the winds persisted we kept the pupils in the classrooms for a total of three hours because of the danger of moving round outside, and then we managed to get buses put on early and closed at 2 p.m.,” Mr Ryburn said. Insulating batts and torn pieces of building paper were scattered over a wide area after the roof was dislodged. One piece hit power lines and cut electricity for a short time.

Speaking about 3 p.m., Mr Ryburn said that the wind

had dropped and the roof had been covered. The school would be open as usual today.

A Weather Office employee who lives at Darfield, estimated the wind there yesterday as gusting to 150km/h.

The north-westerly air flow yesterday covered most of New Zealand north of Timaru. A brief southerly change occurred yesterday afternoon, but nor’westers were expected inland again today, although not as strong as yesterday. In Mid-Canterbury, the Ministry of Transport warned motorists to avoid State highway 1 yesterday morning, particularly near Winslow where the wind tends to funnel between a large building and grain silos and often pushes an unsuspecting driver on to the wrong side of the road. Several shop windows were broken and some roofs lost tiles in winds that reached 108km/h in Ashburton.

Winds reached lOOkm/h at Mount Cook National Park headquarters on Tuesday night. No damage was done, said the duty ranger, Mr Mark Inglis. Rainfall for the 24 hours to 8.30 a.m. yesterday was 117 mm, and the total rainfall had risen to 150 mm by mid-afternoon. Three ski-tour parties, numbering 10 people, are sitting out the bad weather in the Tasman Hut (2350 m The hut, which has 12 bunks, is at the head of the Tasman Glacier. Three park headquarters staff are in the group. “They have plenty of food, including emergency rations,” said Mr Inglis.