Tornado leaves trail of havoc

A damaged vehicle after it was rolled down the street by the tornado. Picture / Fotopress

Peter Smith owes his life to a phone call from "a bloke from Fox Glacier".

Francis Zampese owes his to a small sheltered corner of his foundry.

John Walker credits his survival to bloody good luck.

Their homes and businesses were three of the many devastated by a tornado that swept through Greymouth yesterday afternoon, leaving nine families homeless and causing millions of dollars of damage.

It just missed the main shopping centre and twisted its way up the Grey River before crossing to a lagoon across town and up into the hills, cutting a half-kilometre-wide swathe that ends with clusters of roofing iron dotted through the green hills behind Greymouth.

With the amount of iron and wood flung round by the twister, townspeople last night were calling it a miracle that no one was killed, although three people were injured.

Peter Smith's business was one of the first to bear the brunt. He believes he owes his life to a phone call that brought him back into his office, the only room in the large building with a double ceiling.

"The first we knew was when the power went out, then this huge noise of the roofing peeling off. Then there was a whole lot of daylight."

Mr Smith said if he had been in the yard where he was heading, he would have found it impossible to escape the tornado's deadly cargo of roofing iron and wood.

He pointed to the destruction in his building and yard, saying, "I would have been standing in the thick of this. I don't even know who it was that rang but he saved my ass."

Up to 30 people who were made homeless by the tornado spent the night at the Tai Poutini Polytechnic-owned student motel, where they were fed by Red Cross volunteers.

Some of the families will not be able to return home, including pensioner John Walker. His three-bedroom house is barely standing - only the interior walls remain, and there is little of the roof.

Mr Walker was inside when the twister hit. He heard a loud noise and "next minute hit the ceiling".

He was in shock last night and arrived at the motel clutching the few items he could salvage: a bar of soap, a book and some socks wrapped in a plastic bag.

His was one of two homes destroyed in Swainson St. Across the road, pot plants and gumboots lined up on a porch were not even disturbed. Metres from Mr Walker's home a concrete power pole was snapped in half.

The line-up of buses at a neighbouring depot looked like a scene from a bomb site. None had any windows left and one was dented where it had been overturned.

Across the street the Video Ezy store was gutted, with all of the shelves and videos pushed to the other end of the building.

Francis Zampese's engineering firm, Dispatch and Garlick, was next to be destroyed. The 132-year-old building has survived a smaller tornado and numerous floods, but last night only the shell remained.

Mr Zampese and five others heard and saw the tornado coming. They dived for cover away from the building's huge glass frontage.

Mr Zampese huddled in a small corner and it was only when the noise stopped that he looked up to see a roofing beam - from another building - imbedded in the wall above his head.

One of the workers, Dean Coghlan, said he was lucky to be alive.

"I heard the noise and dived into a lathe - it would have saved me as the walls just came crashing down. I just want to go and have a beer and calm down - what a day."

Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn also had a close call. He had just left the council building when the tornado ripped through the neighbouring Dispatch and Garlick premises.

"I dived into the back seat of my car. The wood and iron was just raining down. The bits that missed me slashed the tyres of my car."

Other beams ended up in the lawn of the council building, flung like javelins.

The clean-up began immediately but Mr Kokshoorn estimates it will be weeks before life gets back to normal.

- additional reporting NZPA