We'd closed all the lifts, sent all the customers hom and put out a 'strong wind' warning, but it wasn't until we saw part of the chipboard cladding from the outside of our building fly past, swiftly followed by the insulation and (involuntarily) by one of our lift operators, that we knew it was getting serious yesterday. The five metre walk from building to bus was hairy to say the least.
It was even worse this morning when only the few necessary staff, including me, edged our way up the mountain this morning past many a partially torn apart ski club house. Our sister ski field on the other side of Mt Ruapehu had had their phone lines destroyed and the mid-morning reading showed wind speeds in excess of 160km/hour at our top café (2020m, 400m above us). It wasn't until we started to head gingerly back to lower ground this afternoon that we saw the wind had not only wrecked buildings, but also thrown rocks across the skifield car parks, leaving only a very few vehicles with windows intact.
And it's still going strong. Our litle farmhouse is shaking and we're just hoping we don't wake up to a starlit sky above our beds or to find the cars in the next field over. Or maybe we'll wake up in Oz.
No comments:
Post a Comment