SWIFT CYCLONE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 83, 9 March 1925, Page 10

SWIFT CYCLONE

QUEENSLAND VISITATION.

TERRIFIC DAMAGE. SYDNEY, February 26. South-western Queensland was in the grip of a heat wave last week, and in its train came terrific storms, with a swift cyclone, which created havoc over a small front for miles. Chinchilla received the worst of it. The heat wave w-as particularly intense during the week, the coolest place showing lOC degrees. The weather on Saturday morning was particularly oppressive. but later clouds showed up, and a thunderstorm passed over the town early in the afternoon. Hardly had the effect of this storm passed when a second storm reached Chinchilla, the rain being torrential. This was bad enough, for the streets were running inches deep in water, but at the latter end of the second storm a terrific gale struck the town. The wind whirled small articles in all directions, and seemed to raise itself to a frenzy for about three minutes only, but it left behind a train of devastation. Trees were uprooted bodily. The iron roof of a largo wagon which was standing near the railway siding, was torn off, and carried into an adjoining street where it smashed. The wind lifted one portion again, and smashed it through the window of a store. Fences all round the town were levelled, and the framwork of the new Soldiers’ Memorial Hall was flattened. The club house was shaken, and in all directions outhouses were blown down. A motor car standing in the street, although held by the brakes, was carried along bodily for about 50 yards. The town’s Roman Catholic Church, one of the show structures, was flattened, while two girls, Thelma Zeller and Gertrude Tennyson were inside. Misa Zeller was able to crawl out from under the debris, but Miss Tennyson was caught by the leg, and was unable to move. It was only after a number of men with levers had worked for half-an-hour that she was released. She was taken to the hospital where she died a day later. All the roads leading into the town were blocked by smashed trees and other debris. One man was driving in a buggy when the wind struck him and upset the turnout. He escaped death by inches. The damage was not confined to the town itself, for outside reports show that though the hurricane moved on a narrow front, and lasted three minutes, many houses were moved bodily a few inches, and at one outlying place the side of a picture theatre was blown out. At Kingsthorpe, in the Highfields district, the same storm appears to have operated. The same conditions obtained, buildings being unroofed, and trees and fences blown down. The storm at Kingsthorpe was accompanied by hail, which was heaped a foot high on the roads. The damage to corn crops was considerable.