Path of destruction

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A large number of tiles had been lifted from their roof, their side boundary fence had been flattened, part of the back fence was knocked over and ceiling lights inside the family’s house were pushed in. Their steel garage door has been twisted and pushed inside the garage, scratching Verma’s Suzuki Swift hatchback. Strangely, the lemon tree in their backyard was still standing.

“By the time we got home, everybody was in the street,” Verma says. “I saw my tree like that [fallen over] and all my neighbours were here. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness’.

“My son said to me there’s a tornado. He must have said something else too but I didn’t register. It was quite overwhelming. I’ve never experienced a tornado.”

Verma phoned her insurance company and was waiting to hear from an assessor on Monday morning.

“I said to them the major thing is I want somebody to cover the roof so we don’t have leaks in the house, because we can see the sky from certain parts of the house.”

She also wanted her garage door fixed as soon as possible. Verma says fire fighters inspected her home on Sunday night and suggested her family stayed elsewhere.

She went to her sister’s house for the night but her eldest son stayed behind and slept in the lounge due to their fear of the house being broken into.

“We were wondering whether we should be vacuuming or not but someone said let the assessors come first. I’ve been in this house for 23 years and I’ve never claimed insurance, until today.”

Verma says it’s “frightening” to have heard about the two males found inside Clark’s home.

“Rahul [her son] stayed here the whole night. He wouldn’t budge.”

A Civil Defence Centre was opened on Sunday night at the Howick Leisure Centre in Pakuranga Road for anyone displaced by the tornado and subsequently closed at 5pm on Monday.

Auckland Emergency Management duty group controller Mace Ward says the agency has been supporting impacted communities since the tornado struck.

The most recent efforts focused on surveying the extent of the damage, co-ordinating building assessments and cleaning up.

“While the final number of properties affected ... is still being collated, it’s clear much of the damage is concentrated in a narrow strip, running from the Pakuranga Golf crossings would impact the emergency services, if they’d worsen emissions and pollution, whether they’d slow freight transport down, and how much they’d cost to install.

Coutts estimated they’d cost about $100,000 each, which he said was “insignificant” relative to the entire project.

Brown asked if a final decision on the plan had been made, and if so, what the timeframe for the installation of the raised crossings was.

“I echo much of the room in objecting to these designs, because the reality is people in east Auckland drive because that’s how we go to work,” he said.

“We work all over the city. The efficiency of our roading network is critically important to our community and that’s the point I continue to reflect.”

The officials said they’d take feedback from the audience on board and come back at a later date. They said the busway is expected to be completed by 2027.