“Handy Andy” Handyman Andy Brown helping board up Bruce Howley’s shed. The mural on the wall has remained, but the roof hasn’t. Photo: RNZ / Leonard Powell
Mangawhai residents are still cleaning up the damage caused by the tornado that ripped through the coastal community north of Auckland in the early hours of 26 January.
The storm hit at 3am on that Sunday morning, with power cut to about 5000 homes, and two people taken to hospital in a serious condition.
Two weeks later, First Up visited the neighbourhood and talked to Noreen Anderson, who was sound asleep when the tornado hit and ripped off part of her roof.
Despite the ruckus, she did not know the extent of the damage until the following morning.
"I slept through it, and it was only when my daughter over and told me 'there's been a tornado and the roof is gone'."
“I went back to bed” Noreen Anderson had no idea her roof was partially ripped off until the morning. Photo: RNZ / Leonard Powell
Kahu Road - where Anderson lives - comes off Old Waipu Road, which was hit the hardest by the storm.
Resident Bruce Howley described how the wind smashed through his barn.
"It blew the roller door off this barn and into the back of the barn, hitting a wall, and then it seemed to go up behind a steel beam and probably got caught. The door was actually just flattened.
"So you can imagine how much force that is. And then the roof, no one knows where the roof is. It's gone somewhere."
Bruce Howley stands across the road from his barn. Photo: RNZ / Leonard Powell
Howley resides across town, and was grateful no one was in the barn when the storm hit. He said his missing roof paled in comparison to what had happened to his friend Tina Johnson.
"While I was coming here I was ringing my neighbour to see if there was any damage to her place. Unbeknownst to me, she was already in hospital cause she got blown out to from a her upstairs bedroom onto her. A carport roof. Incidentally, that Lady is recovering well."
At least 90 homes have been assessed for storm damage.
Twenty six of those have been white-stickered, meaning they have some damage but can be safely occupied, while eight homes have been yellow-stickered, which means access is restricted.
Three households remain in emergency accommodation.
Howley said the community had banded together to help out.
"It's just amazing how everybody has been helping and always, you know, because we had no power on the street. People giving food, one couple come along with a wheelbarrow full of water. And then then people came in and helped clean the property up the next day, just volunteers."
A staggering 2500 cubic metres of green waste and 37.5 tons of general waste has been collected from berms in the area.
Nearly seven tonnes of scrap metal has been recycled, which might explain where Howley's roof has ended up.
Bruce's barn was shared by two businesses - a signwriter and a small leather goods maker.
Nearly a kilometre away on Molesworth Drive, Caren Davis was cleaning up debris the morning after the storm, when she found a brand new leather belt in her backyard.
"Our son quite liked it, so he he put it on for the morning that I explained to him that it it belonged to someone else and it had arrived here with the tornado. We had to find its home."
The belt that Caren Davis found nearly a kilometre away from its workshop. Photo: RNZ / Leonard Powell
After a few posts in the local Facebook group, it turned out the belt had come all the way from Bruce's place up on Old Waipu Road. Caren dropped it back off, and wasn't the only one.
"We're at least 700, maybe 800 metres away from where that business is. Those items were just found scattered everywhere."
Davis's husband Jonny said the storm was all anyone had been talking about. Across the road from their property, trees were being dug out, chopped up and taken away.
Fallen trees are cleared on Molesworth Drive. Photo: RNZ / Leonard Powell
Property owner Malcolm Halley said his housemate had a "grandstand view" of the black cloud carrying the destruction.
"Sam described these five electric water spouts coming from the black cloud. They were composed entirely of of spiralling lightning, continuous lightning bolts going to the ground, described as being like a tentacles of a big black octopus, dancing slowly over the over the landscape and and creating a noise destruction wherever they landed."
Halley and his partner Pauline said they were still coming to terms with losing an acre and half of trees, some of them more than 100 years old.
They have also lost the the privacy those trees provided - but sitting in what they describe as their "art village", Pauline had found a poetic silver lining.
"You know that quote of Leonard Cohen? About letting the light in. We've let the light in, and now we're getting carry on."
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