Near­ly a dozen home­own­ers in West­moor­ings are count­ing their loss­es af­ter a tor­na­do tore through the area yes­ter­day morn­ing, caus­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age and leav­ing streets cov­ered with de­bris.

Ac­cord­ing to the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU), the storm dam­aged 12 roofs, trig­gered two in­ci­dents of flood­ing, and brought down at least one large tree.

The streets hard­est hit in­clud­ed Cher­ry Cres­cent, St An­tho­ny’s Dri­ve, Row­land Road, and West­ern Cir­cle, where res­i­dents faced pow­er­ful winds that tore off rooftops, brought down pow­er lines, and scat­tered de­bris across roads and prop­er­ties.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports from the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion in­di­cat­ed that around 150 homes in the area ex­pe­ri­enced pow­er out­ages.

Emer­gency and mu­nic­i­pal agen­cies quick­ly mo­bilised to re­spond, co­or­di­nat­ing ef­forts to re­store ser­vices and en­sure the safe­ty of res­i­dents.

What be­gan as a rou­tine Tues­day morn­ing quick­ly spi­ralled in­to chaos. Just be­fore mid­day, res­i­dents said the tor­na­do struck with­out warn­ing, trans­form­ing what seemed like a heavy down­pour in­to a vi­o­lent wind event that ripped roofs off homes, up­root­ed trees, and sent de­bris crash­ing on­to ve­hi­cles.

Sev­er­al mo­torists and res­i­dents cap­tured the ter­ri­fy­ing mo­ments on their cell­phones as the pow­er­ful gusts bat­tered homes and any­thing in their paths.

Videos of the weath­er phe­nom­e­non cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly, show­ing its force from ground lev­el, over­head drones, and even off­shore asit caused torn off roofs to swirl in the air be­fore they were thrown on the ground.

For those who live in the area, the footage on­ly cap­tured a frac­tion of what ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred.

At Cher­ry Cres­cent, which res­i­dents de­scribed as “ground ze­ro”, blown-off roofs and oth­er de­bris lit­tered the streets, mak­ing them im­pass­able.

Some res­i­dents were emo­tion­al, while oth­ers seemed vis­i­bly shocked, no doubt pon­der­ing the mas­sive clean-up ef­fort re­quired to re­turn their homes and lives to nor­mal­cy.

The de­struc­tion of the home of West­moor­ings res­i­dent Richard Dass was cap­tured on so­cial me­dia.

He shared the or­deal.

“I heard a very, very loud noise. It felt like the roof was shak­ing. By the time I got up­stairs to the room, I saw my neigh­bours ... their roof be­ing blown off,” he ex­plained.

“At first, I thought it was an earth­quake be­cause of the loud noise. Then I re­alised there was no phys­i­cal shak­ing, so it must have been some kind of mi­ni-storm or a big storm. I wasn’t even think­ing of turn­ing any­thing on at that time.”

Clean-up ef­forts com­mence

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, who quick­ly ar­rived in West­moor­ings, ex­plained that a “strong, con­cen­trat­ed wind” caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age across sev­er­al streets in West­moor­ings, rip­ping roofs off homes and leav­ing fam­i­lies bat­tling flood­ing and wa­ter dam­age.

Ameen de­scribed the scene as “very trau­mat­ic”, not­ing that while many fam­i­lies were at home when the in­ci­dent oc­curred, no in­juries had been re­port­ed.

“Sev­er­al roofs have been blown off com­plete­ly, oth­ers par­tial­ly dam­aged, and in some cas­es, falling tree branch­es and de­bris wors­ened the de­struc­tion,” Ameen said. “You’re see­ing soaked fur­ni­ture, car­pets, and ap­pli­ances; it’s heart­break­ing.”

Ameen said teams from the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were on the ground con­duct­ing as­sess­ments, but due to the mag­ni­tude of the dis­as­ter, neigh­bour­ing cor­po­ra­tions have al­so been mo­bilised to as­sist with da­ta col­lec­tion and re­lief co­or­di­na­tion.

“We will vis­it every home and every fam­i­ly. The im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is to help res­i­dents se­cure their be­long­ings be­fore more rain falls,” she added.

The min­is­ter con­firmed that dis­as­ter man­age­ment units have be­gun doc­u­ment­ing the ex­tent of loss­es, in­clud­ing house­hold and ap­pli­ance dam­age, while drone footage is be­ing re­viewed to sup­port of­fi­cial as­sess­ments.

Ameen said some af­fect­ed res­i­dents have al­ready en­gaged con­trac­tors and in­sur­ance providers, but Gov­ern­ment sup­port will con­tin­ue “un­til all fam­i­lies are sta­bilised and safe”.

Diego Mar­tin West MP Hans des Vi­gnes was al­so on the scene.

“Any cit­i­zen any­where in the world, if their roof is blown off, ex­pe­ri­ences a some­what life-chang­ing event. You have to make a lot of ad­just­ments. Some of the in­di­vid­u­als af­fect­ed have chil­dren, so fam­i­lies are fig­ur­ing out which rel­a­tives will sleep where tonight and man­ag­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges. Again, we’ll do our best to sup­port them.”

Diego Mar­tin May­or Akeilah Glas­gow-Warn­er and Coun­cil­lor Am­ber Caines, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Glen­coe/Good­wood/La Puer­ta, were al­so on the ground over­see­ing cleanup ef­forts and co­or­di­nat­ing with first re­spon­ders.