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Dairy owner Satnam Singh was struggling to get the power running to stop icecream melting when all hell broke loose.
"Suddenly, boom, it happened. I've never seen anything like that in my life," Mr Singh said yesterday.
At 8pm on Tuesday, ferocious winds pounding Coromandel's western coast smashed
through the windows of his Boomerang Takeaway and Dairy, then tore the roof off the veranda, flinging it over the top of the building.
It disappeared over the family's house behind the dairy, and crashed into a tree, 50m away.
The wind also ripped the rest of the roof off the Te Punu dairy, leaving it exposed to driving rain.
Mr Singh, his wife, son, daughter and daughter-in-law, couldn't sleep that night as they feared for their lives.
"We're so upset, so confused," said Harjeet Kaur, his daughter.
People all along the coast woke up to devastation. The storm had ripped apart trees, battered buildings and tossed boats on to rocks.
Power was back on in Thames yesterday afternoon, but was not expected to be restored to the peninsula until midday today.
At Thames Hospital, surgery was suspended yesterday while accident and emergency staff coped with the help of back-up generators.
At Thames air strip, an aviation maintenance firm's hanger stood with a gaping hole in its side as rain swept in.
Further north, there was extensive surface flooding and swollen streams gushed from the hills into the Firth of Thames. Diggers and bulldozers worked all day clearing SH25.
At Tararu the vice-commodore of Thames Yacht Club, Christine Heady, woke up to see her Finn-class boat impaled on a fence on the opposite side of the road. A Laser yacht ended up in a nearby tree.
"It's unbelievable," Ms Heady said. "The wind has picked this [her yacht] up, flipped it off the trailer and it has flown across the road and speared through that person's fence over there. This was once [America's Cup sailor] Craig Monk's boat - if he could see it now it would break his heart."
District Mayor Philippa Barriball said four homes in Thames lost roofs. Coromandel Chief Fire Officer John Walker said similar damage occurred to four homes in his town. He believed wind gusts exceeded 180km/h.
On Wyuna Bay Rd, just out of Coromandel, Milton and Kelly Walton spent the morning with other people helping to salvage property from the home of retired woman Kaye Mayhead, who lives alone.
Mrs Mayhead slept soundly through the night as the wind tore her roof from her home. She woke to a wet floor, thinking "I must have left a window open".
Across the road she saw Pink Batts from her ceiling caught up in manuka trees. "It was a bit of a shock then."
Ms Barriball said sewerage systems throughout the district, including those in Tairua-Pauanui, Whitianga, Coromandel and Thames, were being pumped manually.
Hauraki Plains farmers fared little better. The area was strewn with uprooted trees, fences, plastic tanks and mangled road signs.
At Puriri, the fire station lost its roof and volunteers worked throughout yesterday to restore it.
Towns on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula were also without power yesterday, after losing it about 5.30pm on Tuesday. People had to rely on candles and gas cookers, but most were grateful they had escaped relatively unscathed.
