FIERCE WHIRLWIND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1938, Page 7

FIERCE WHIRLWIND

ASHBURTON BUSINESS AREA SWEPT SHEETS OF IRON HURLED THROUGH THE AIR. GIRL BLOWN FROM BICYCLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) ASHBURTON, December 4. A whirlwind at 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon caused damage, in the business area of Ashburton. Sweeping over the town from north to south, it stripped sheets of iron from the roofs and hurled them two or three hundred feet into the air. Some of them landed fully half a mile away. A girl riding a bicycle in Mona Square was thrown to the road, btr was not injured. Several men had to run for their lives from flying debris. While a thunderstorm was passing some miles beyond the town, the phenomenon appeared with remarkable suddenness from the north, carrying large clouds of dust and paper in a vertical swirl, which rotated at a very fast rate. The path of the whirlwind was across the top of the old burnt-out Majestic Theatre, near which two sheets of iron were lifted hundreds of feet into the air and carried in a southerly direction. A section of wooden fence in Wills Street was blown down, and an iron lean-to was lifted from a coal-yard in the Triangle and tossed over a fence. A door was wrenched from its hinges and the leadlight carried off the top of a shop in the same locality. Continuing directly across the business area, the whirlwind carried loose cement plaster from the top of a building in Burnett Street and careered over the Arcade, where the worst damage was done. Portion of the strong current of air swirled in the Burnett Street entrance of the Arcade, and, so great was the suction, it carried a large plate glass window into an empty shop and tore its way through the roof, lifting off several sheets of iron, some of which were hurled into the yard below. Another cracked shop-window in the Arcade was also blown in.

A large lean-to shelter at the. back of the building occupied by Mr 'C. E. Bailey in Tancred Street was struck as though an explosion had occurred and was stripped of its roof, one large section, containing 16 sheets with supports attached, being hurled into the air over the top of a building toward the National Bank of New Zealand. Such were the vagaries of the whirlwind that this portion of the roof was suddenly released, and it spun back on its course and crashed into a right-of-way alongside Mr Bailey’s showroom. Another section of the lean-to roof was lifted on to the main building. Several sheets of iron were also torn from their, fastenings on the main, building and were blown across the top of the roof. Others were folded back like sheets of paper. A small car parked on the street was lifted over the side channel and blown 50 yards down the street. Many persons watched the progress of the whirlwind in its wild career across the town until it reached the Ashburton River and then headed in an easterly direction, carrying a large, cloud of dust toward the coast.