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Greymouth tornado, March 2005 PHOTO ALBUM

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Tony Kokshoorn
14m ·
2005 GREYMOUTH TORNADO.
Tony Kokshoorn
57m ·
2005 GREYMOUTH TORNADO. .
On the tenth of March 2005 Mother Nature came calling to remind me that I was a lucky sod. I live in Greymouth!
You might think that is a strange thing to think given the nature of that day and the horrific warzone she left in her wake but if you were me you would feel the same, I’m sure.
Just another early afternoon, two customers in the video shop and I was readying the late list calls when the power cut out. Damn. I leisurely marked the time in the diary and turned to watch the couple who were still meandering along the row of DVDs as they sought their evening’s entertainment.
Looking over their heads out the window I saw my own movie unfold as a wall of dust and debris approached. Wow. I thought it was paper blowing in the wind but now know it was corrugated iron roofs twisting and undulating like they were rice paper.
By the time it finally occurred to me that I was watching a tornado the busses over the road in their compound were starting to tip.
“Get down, get away from the windows!” I remember shouting that. I also remember that I was grateful that the couple had their heads screwed on as the husband tackled his wife to the ground before the windows imploded.
This is when I hunkered down behind the counter and closed my eyes, covered my head with my arms and waited for Armageddon. The sound of the freight train/washing machine on spin cycle/monster eating my workplace was intense and then … gone.
I looked up. At blue sky. Huh. No roof.
I looked over at the windows. Huh. No windows.
I looked over at the shelves. Yep you guessed it. No shelves.
The monster had picked up the shelves that usually took three people to move and thrown them against the back wall with a vicious temper while shouting the odds but had somehow managed to miss the couple who stood in the wreckage as dazed as me.
Wow.
People began to pour into the store through the holes where windows used to be and I was again reminded that I live in the best place in the world.
My laptop that has sat quietly at my feet had been speared by a shard of glass that, had I not for the first time taken it to work, would have speared me. It even still booted up! Lucky huh?
My fear at learning it came through Blaketown first speared my gut as I thought of my home and pets. I hastily rang Grey Main to check my little brothers were OK before calling my father to get him to pick up the kids as they were sending them home. My house was one street over from the street hit. Lucky huh?
It was later as I stood in the dusk outside the ruins of the foundry with Tony Kokshoorn on a conference call with media that I felt the full elation of the day. No one lost. Not a single death, though the bill was a biggie. Monster clean-up is expensive stuff.
No, my elation was at being alive. At being there. The reporter told me that I was very upbeat given my day and I responded that it was because I’m a West Coaster. I believed I laughed.
We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and then turn to our fellow man to offer help. We’re West Coasters.
Our Mayor had survived the monster as well. It had attacked his car and was unable to breach its metal shell. He was one of the early visitors to my clean up with offers to help.
“Feed these people for me Tony” I said and KFC and McDonalds did great feeding the many people filing in and out from tradies shoring up the building to the firemen who I still think spent too long in the “blue” room.
Now my sister has experienced Mother Nature’s wrath as her home was attacked last year. Who came to help? Mayor Tony Kokshoorn. Clambering about on her roof to secure tarps before the rain like a spider monkey half his age.
As Marcia and her family wait in rented accommodation for her house repairs to be completed, safe and unharmed that day, I again come back to the simple fact that I am one lucky sod!
I live in Greymouth.
Jo Awatere-Jones
West CoasterPhotographerGreymouth StarDate of PhotoBetween 1st January 2005 and 31st December 2005Map^[1]External LinkAlexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

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Location (city or town)GreymouthLandmark (Place)Boundary StreetDispatch and GarlickOrganisation (eg business)Video EzyEventTornado

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