EIGHTY MILES AN HOUR TORNADO STRIKES VALLEY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18466, 18 May 1928, Page 7

EIGHTY MILES AN HOUR TORNADO STRIKES VALLEY.

BUILDINGS WRECKED AND WATER SUCKED OUT OF OPEN WELL. (Special to the “ Star.”) AUCKLAND. May 17. A graphic account of a tornado that swept through the Hoetaitui Valley, twenty miles distant from Morrinsville, on Monday, is given by Mr C. Robinson, a settler whose house was in the centre of the disturbance. The tornado swept past at a velocity of eighty miles an hour, cutting a track one hundred feet wide. There was a terrific noise and Mr Robinsion could not hear himself speaking. A heavy concrete chimney was blown down, causing the roof of the building to sag. The suction was so great that wallpaper was turn from the walls of one room. A small shed was pulled out of the ground by the foundations. The roof was torn off a cowshed. Sheets of iron were scattered about a paddock and tins were lifted 500 feet in the air and dropped three-quarters of a mile away. Cabbage trees fifty years old were torn out by the roots. On an adjacent section owned by Maoris, a chimney was blown down, and carried a hundred yards away. All the water was sucked out of an open well into the air and dropped with a crash on to the ground. The noise of the disturbance was heard half a mile away.