ROOF TORN OFF

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 4, 5 July 1939, Page 12

ROOF TORN OFF

AUCKLAND WHIRLWIND

OTHER DAMAGE DONE

A NARROW ESCAPE

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND. This Day. A whirlwind struck a lax*ge tramways barn at Epsom at 2 o'clock this morning and carried away 100 feet of roof, which was scattered over the adjoining Auckland Trotting Club's course. Pieces of the roof were found over 400 yards away and other pieces pierced plateglass windows in the main trotting grandstand. The night foreman, Mr. A. Calder, said that the whirlwind came with a terrifying roar. There was no time for the 22 men on night work to escape before a portion of the roof was torn off. They dashed out, but the whirlwind ended as suddenly as it began. One man had a narrow escape. He was cleaning a tramcar when a 20ft long beam, six inches by four inches, fell within twelve inches of him. Numerous fences and wireless poles were blown down in the Epsom district, and a large wooden garage was flung bodily into the next section, coming to rest about 40 feet away from its original site. The garage is now a jumbled mass of iron, woodwork, and plaster. A light car and a motor-cycle which were housed in the garage remained where they were, but a heavy sidecar, which had been removed from the motor-cycle and hung on an iron bracket on the wall of the garage, was carried away with the building. The garage roof fell on top of a fowlhouse in an adjoining section and almost crushed the fowls.

"I thought the side of the house had blown in," said Mrs. Raymond Russell, wife of the owner of the garage. ; "My little daughter was sleeping on a sun porch on that side of the house, and I rushed to see if she was all right. The whirlwind came with a scream and a roar, and for a moment I thought it was an earthquake." Next door, Mrs. J. W. Jervis, on whose section the garage was blown, is convinced that there is nothing in at least one popular superstition. She pointed with a smile today at "No. 13" on her gate. The only apparent damage to her property was that to the wireless mast, which was bent at right angles.

A macrocarpa tree in Mont Legrand Road, 60 feet high, was blown down.

Rain has fallen on five days this month, the total fall being 2.06 inches.