A tornado has ripped through a caravan park in Victoria, causing more than $1 million in damage.
Two people were injured as high winds tossed cabins, boats and white goods the into the air leaving Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park at Koallah just off the Princes Highway resembling a ‘bomb site’
“I have never seen anything like it,” Camperdown SES unit controller Colin Brian told the Warrnambool Standard. “I haven’t been so overwhelmed by a scene since the rail crossing crash out at Lismore … and that’s going back a few years now.”
Mr Brian said there were only five people staying at the park at the time.
“I can’t believe how lucky that is … thank God it wasn’t Easter,” he said. “We had one person who cut his leg and another person who knocked his head, and they were attended to by an ambulance.”
Warrnambool police Sergeant Bec Miles told the Standard that the tornado had felled trees and ripped rooves off houses in the area, and one cabin at the park had been thrown 300 metres.
“When we arrived the park was in a really bad state,” she told the Standard. “There were cabins and boats strewn everywhere .. we could smell gas so the CFA was called in too.”
Tornadoes in Australia are relatively rare, with around 10 to 20 observed annually, but can form with almost any severe thunderstorm.
A very disturbing event /peak time a different story /gee
Similar to what came through Dollar to Alberton mid 2000’s. 100 metres wide. 40 k travel. Twisted mature eucalyptus 6-800mm like matchsticks.