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Five days after Mangawhai’s tornado, Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell visited ground zero, meeting emergency crews and storm survivors to offer assurances of government support and to hear harrowing experiences of a night they will never forget.
Accompanied by National Emergency Management Agency director John Price, Northland MP Grant McCallum and Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson, Mitchell went on a walking tour of the worst hit areas on January 31, viewing the enormity of the devastation and talking to locals, some of whom were still understandably in shock.
Old Waipu Road residents Penny and Nic Berthoud met the group in their home, a one-year-old house which, although cleared of debris, still bore the scars of the tornado. Emotional scars from the traumatic experience also remained, with the couple unsure if they would return.
“It’s incredible how anyone didn’t die,” Mitchell said. “What saved this situation from being a lot worse was the fact that it was 3am. If it had hit during daylight hours when more people were up and about, with the sort of missiles we’ve seen and the velocity they were moving at, we would have lost people.”
Luck it seemed was on Mangawhai’s side, as several residents reported that if their children had been home, the night could have ended in tragedy.
A few metres down the road from the Berthouds, the twister picked up an eight-metre-long sleepout, throwing it over a shrub-lined bund wall before dumping it upside down in the gutter. The small cabin was the bedroom of a teenage boy who by chance was out for the night.
“Luckily, our three-year-old wasn’t home either because I think if he was, I don’t know if he’d be here today, that’s how bad his bedroom was blown in,” Nic said. “Our 15-year-old son was in his room and was smart enough to put a duvet over his head before the glass came crashing through.
Penny and Nic were moving their outdoor furniture up against the house as the wind started to pick up and had just returned to bed when “bang, all hell broke loose!”“It got quiet suddenly, it was eerie, so I got up and pulled the curtain back. There was a lightning strike and I saw a brazier on top of our water tank just launch into the air. I grabbed Pen and dove into the walk-in wardrobe,” Nic said. “Then it was like a plane taking off, you could feel the whole house twisting and I was just waiting for the frame to rip off. The noise was phenomenal.”
After a long 30 to 45 seconds the whirlwind abated, leaving a disconcerting quietness, before the couple heard cries of help from neighbour Tina Johnson.
“At first, I thought it was the cat, but then I could hear talking and screaming. I was like, ‘oh shit, that’s Tina’, so I bolted out the back door, jumped the fence and found her,” Nic said. “Her bedroom was upstairs and she’d been blown out and across the carport roof. I think she was slightly impaled with timber and corrugated iron and stuff at the time.”
Nic was soon joined by others who had also heard Tina’s cries. Access to her house was blocked by fallen trees, so firefighters had to carry her to a waiting ambulance and she was eventually helicoptered to hospital.
The dawn revealed a chaotic scene of shattered homes, shredded vegetation, stripped building materials, glass shrapnel embedded in walls and wrecked ca
Nic says the loss of his boat was a “real hurting point”.
Replying to Mitchell’s enquiries, Penny said she was impressed by their insurer’s quick response, and the couple was now staying with friends.
“The rebuild will be quite long though. We’re just waiting to hear from the structural engineers to give us an idea. I don’t know if we’ll return yet, we’ll probably get the house rebuilt, spend a night or two here to see how it feels, before deciding to move on or not. It was a traumatic experience.”
Local design signage business Juicy Media was also in the twister’s path along Old Waipu Road and owner James Taylor showed Mitchell and his entourage the ruined site of his business.
“I’ve lost the whole lot, all product, computers – my source of income gone overnight. I didn’t have any income protection insurance either,” he said. “When I woke up today it actually hit me. I was feeling quite emotional, I’ve been sort of riding on adrenaline I guess since it happen
However, after operating for 17 years, James said he was determined to rebuild and start again with the foundations of a new shed already in the ground.
“I’ve got an acre of land up Lawrence Road and had mates up there on diggers and getting poles in the ground already,” he said. “I’ll be out of the game for probably two or three months. It’s just life, you know, you have to try to stay positive and find a way to survive, come back and don’t let it beat you.”
James was unaware of the tornado until a friend started banging on his door saying “someone’s blown up the shed”.
“It was like a bomb had gone off all down the road; it was crazy. But there are some good people in this community like Smith Construction, Northern Foundations, RTH Builders, they’ve all been around, diggers drilling out holes, putting in my poles, cutting the slabs, giving me timber at cost on their account and Jepo (mayor Craig Jepson) giving me a call to see how I’m going. That has been amazing.”
Mitchell said he had huge admiration for Nic Bertoud for his quick decisions to protect his family.
“I think it made a big difference in terms of them coming through relatively unscathed,” Mitchell said. “I am also very impressed with how strong the community is and how they mobilised and wrapped support around each other right from the early hours of the event to the clean-up.
“There’s always a big human cost in a crisis, not just with the initial response but in the recovery as well, which is critically important, from clean-up to things like emergency housing. Every government agency will respond to make sure that they get the support people need up here.”
