BUNKERED DOWN: Jon and Bev Mayson surrounded by the soggy mess inside their Mount Maunganui home. PHOTOS/ANDREW WARNER
BUNKERED DOWN: Jon and Bev Mayson surrounded by the soggy mess inside their Mount Maunganui home. PHOTOS/ANDREW WARNER
Jon and Bev Mayson are expected to spend weeks in temporary accommodation after Thursday night's tornado ripped the entire roof off their Mount Maunganui pole house.
The tornado struck with such force that the flat uppermost section of the roof was dumped, frame and all, against the next-door house.
Read more bellow of a Mount Maunganui family were hit twice with bad luck
The former Port of Tauranga chief executive watched helplessly as rain cascaded into their upstairs bedrooms pouring through gaps in the sarking because the house did not have a roof cavity.
It was made much worse because the gaping hole could not be plugged and rain poured through all night until builders arrived at 7.15am to begin temporary repairs.
Not realising what had happened they went outside and spotted wreckage lying in the neighbours' back yard.
"I quickly established it was our house and we started moving stuff as fast as we could downstairs, starting with valuable artworks on the walls."
TEMPORARY FIX: Builders began work to fix the Maysons' house yesterday.
Firefighters arrived within minutes to help haul everything downstairs and cover it with tarpaulins.
"We worked by torchlight with the water [pouring] in."
They toiled until everything that could be done had been done, and bunked down in a neighbour's house for the rest of the night.
The Maysons were touched deeply by the outpouring of generosity and care.
"The Fire Service was brilliant, even the local MP Todd Muller arrived. How cool is that," he said. "I'm grateful we are OK and alive."
It will be their first insurance claim on the house they built in Waitui Grove 37 years ago - the Mount's first pole house.
He said builder Riordan Construction was unbelievable, arriving first thing in the morning after realising that the path of the tornado looked dangerously close to the Maysons.
A big upset was damage to a pohutukawa on the section.
A Mount Maunganui couple in the throes of a house shift have suffered an almost unbelievable double helping of bad luck.
Not only did Thursday night's tornado damage their old Waitui Grove house, but it demolished a fence of the house they were about to shift into.
TORNADO TURMOIL: Murray Gough and his son, Michael, rest up during a house shift marred by the tornado. PHOTO/ANDREW WARNER
Murray and Jenny Gough were enjoying a sentimental "last supper" with family in the house they had lived in for 27 years when the tornado sent the roof of neighbours Jon and Bev Mayson flying across the back fence.
It cartwheeled over the fence, flipped, landed on the Gough's roof and then blew on to the lawn.
Mr Gough then learned that the house they had bought in nearby Ulster St had its fence flattened as the powerful twister left a trail of destruction from Clyde St to Te Maunga.
The excitement of taking over new houses has been squashed
Interviewed yesterday amid a busy house shift on settlement day, Mr Gough said it was hard to believe the coincidence of both properties sustaining tornado damage when thousands of other homes in Mount Maunganui were unscathed.
He was unsure about the extent of the damage to their old family home in Waitui Grove.
There were several holes in the roof and above the dormer kitchen window where the frame of the Maysons' flying roof had punched through.
Though the damage would be settled by their insurer, he felt sorry for the people who had bought their house.
If the flying roof had gone directly across instead of diagonally, it could have wiped them out as they sat at the family table enjoying supper.
The worst part was that they had put a big effort into getting the property looking tidy. "Now all that work is largely undone."
