The Tornado.
Ok folks this was a really scary one and one which I would never want to go through again, nor would I ever want anyone to experience this first hand.
We had quite a stormy week on the farm and I’m quite sure the animals were as over it all as much as myself and my parents were. It’s hard work when the weather is bad and you cannot just stay inside the house and say never mind the animals will be ok, not so, they still have to be checked, fed, water supply checked, paddocks checked for anything foreign in there, more so when the weather is bad. If anything there is more work to do in these instances.
My mother and myself had not long got home from work, it was a Wednesday afternoon and my father was getting ready for his graveyard nightshift as a security guard, he would soon be gone and not back home until about 6am the next morning so there would just be myself and my mum at home.
The weather was really picking up momentum outside and I told my mother that I was going to move our stallion from the paddock behind the stables and put him into the paddock outside our kitchen which would give us a good view of him and he would be safer there for the night. All of our other horses were fine as they were in our West paddock which was relatively sheltered.
We checked all of the other animals, fed them, made sure their covers were secure and that the paddocks were all looking safe, all was well and they all seemed to be quite content given the horrid weather.
Around 10pm we decided that we should get some sleep as we had work the next day. My mother put our Border Collie (Gypsy) in her run up the back beside the stable block and I put our two cats (Jaspee & Sharma) in the cattery for the night on the other side.
We only had one Border Collie (dog - Gypsy) at that stage but had purchased another one (Tammy) which we were driving up north on the pending weekend to collect. My dad had already made her a kennel to match Gypsy’s one and they had a huge dog run which was 4 metres by 4 metres in size, it was constructed of 100mm solid posts with hurricane mesh sides and bolted together, the roof was solid corrugated iron and it was really sheltered and snug in there. If it ever needed moving then we would require about 8 men to move it, it was as solid as a rock.
Midnight came around and we were woken up with a start, something really bad was happening outside, we could hear crashing and trees breaking. We both grabbed our gumboots and torches and rushed outside to see what on earth was going on. When we stepped outside the back door we were standing in about 2 feet of water, the cattery which had our two cats in it was over on its side and submerged in water, Jaspee was missing and Sharma was trying desperately to keep his head above water, I tried in vain to open the cattery door but it was jammed tight, I shouted over the rain and wind to my mother to go and grab a sledge hammer out of the garage, she didn’t know what that was so I just yelled back, get the biggest and heaviest hammer that you can carry. She came back with the sledge hammer that I was after and I began smashing the door in. We got Sharma out and pretty much threw him inside the house soaking wet and shivering with the cold.
I said to my mother that we need to check if Gypsy was ok, so we went around the corner of the house and to our horror the dog pen and kennels were gone, there was absolutely nothing left, Gypsy was gone, we called out to her but there was nothing at all. We were soaked at this stage and battling the wind to even stand up straight, we decided to head back inside and dry off a bit. When we got inside the house I glanced at the lounge ranch slider and who happened to be there staring back at me but Gypsy and Jaspee, our missing cat and dog. They were really shaken up and freezing cold, we got them inside the house and I lit the fire while my mother went and got some towels so that we could dry them all off a bit. We spent the rest of the night waiting for daylight to be able to assess the damage.
What had happened was that a tornado had hit and split at the garage end of the house and tunneled down both sides of the house, taking out the cattery, dog pen, damaging the roof of the stables and the post and rail fencing behind it. It then threw debris right into the paddock where I had earlier moved our stallion from; he would have been killed if the dog pen had of hit him.
The morning shed light on the damage, the cattery was pretty much firewood as I had done a lot of damage trying to get Sharma out, the dog pen had been lifted to the top of the stable block, taken out the flashing at the top of the stable roof and then thrown the dog pen and kennels straight through our stallions paddock and a further 50 metres onto our neighbour’s farm. There was basically nothing left of it, it was pretty much kindling, even the 10 inch bolts that were holding the whole thing together were bent like toothpicks and the roof was gone.
Later in the morning we went to check on our neighbour’s and see if they were all ok. The neighbour on our left had power lines arcing on their front lawn and their fencing was pulled out and strewn all over the place, across the road their firewood had been thrown all over their roof and down the road at Alistair’s house his half round barn was gone. From what we could determine nobody in our neighbourhood had suffered any injuries of any kind and neither did any stock that anyone had. There was just a massive amount of repairs and clean up that would have to be done all over the place and quite a few insurance claims, including our own.
My father was astounded when he got home as he had been working in the City and had no idea what was going on, he knew the weather was bad outside but he didn’t in his wildest dreams imagine that we would be hit with a tornado overnight. Neither did we and none of us ever want to go through that one again.
We ended up being on the radio that day on the daily news and when we went to work the following day a lot of our co-workers had heard all about it and knew what was going on. Our insurance assessors came out and surveyed the damage to our farm, buildings etc and they came up with the conclusion that it must have hit our garage and somehow split taking out anything in its path either side of our house, their assessment was that it must not have been that much of a powerful one, the stables were relatively undamaged because they were in line with the house and somewhat sheltered, but either side of the house is where the Dog Pen and Cattery suffered the most. All of which were rebuilt and the stable roof was repaired as well.
Tornados are not a common occurrence in New Zealand, if I never see another one in my lifetime then I will be a happy camper! I have seen a few tiny little dust devils which are capable of picking up an empty plastic plant pot and swirling it around for a little while, those are cute, tornados are not! Mother Nature sure can have some fury when agitated.
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