Twister causes chaos

A clean-up was under way yesterday in the Far North after a tornado tore a trail of destruction across the Karikari Peninsula on Sunday night. The twister flattened as many as 500 trees on one single property, demolished sheds, brought pines down across SH10, and sent a fridge, trampoline and dinghy flying.

A stunned Andrew Potbury was yesterday still surveying the destruction on his Inland Road property and wondering where to start cleaning up.

His "retirement fund", a 17-year-old plantation of around 600 gum, blackwood and other trees destined for furniture, was little more than kindling, with all but two rows of trees flattened or snapped off five metres above the ground.

Mr Potbury, however, said he and his family had been very lucky.

Trees had come crashing down 30 metres from his home, and a barbecue and fridge had been sucked off his verandah, but his home was undamaged.

The weather had been rough all evening but worsened dramatically around 9.30pm.

"It didn't give us any warning. It just arrived and was all over in a minute," he said.

"It was a colossal amount of wind, it was horrific. It was a real growl. The guy next door said it sounded like a jet engine."

Mr Potbury and his wife Te Aroha checked their children by torchlight, finding all five had slept through the drama, and checked the dogs and pet lamb.

Power was restored by 2.30am but it was only when daylight came that he realised the scale of the destruction.

Trees up to 20-metres high had been uprooted or snapped like matchsticks; a pigsty had been demolished and pieces of a neighbour's new chook pen were scattered through what used to be his plantation. There was no sign of the chooks, but the ground was littered with dozens of dead birds, many of them quail. Mr Potbury was hoping to catch and get help for a white-faced heron with a broken wing.

His children's trampoline had become airborne and smashed a car window, while a few houses away a dinghy's flight was stopped when its anchor caught in a tree. Another neighbour lost a greenhouse and his chilli crop.

Mangonui's chief fire officer, Peter Sainsbury, said the brigade spent three hours cutting up five fallen trees and clearing SH10. Yesterday it was still down to one lane as contractors finished the job.

Meanwhile, a fresh slip triggered by torrential rain on Saturday and Sunday nights swept away a large chunk of SH10 opposite the Matauri Bay turnoff.

Fulton Hogan contractors had worked for the past three weeks to repair an earlier slip and by the end of last week had removed the loose soil and benched the slope. They had planned to start backfilling yesterday only to find an even bigger slip had swallowed the northbound lane to within a metre of the centreline.

Site supervisor Warren Gill estimated another 3000-4000 cubic metres of soil had slipped.