The West Australian city of Bunbury has been hit by another freak weather event, leaving three people in hospital and thousands of homes without power.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 You might be able to see behind me, this is just a portion of the extent of the damage
00:05 that was wreaked by that freak weather event last night.
00:09 I actually was driving back from the pub that was on the main street because the power had
00:13 gone out and we actually came past here because this is our local pub, the Parade Hotel, and
00:18 the damage then was extensive.
00:21 There was debris everywhere.
00:22 I mean, even today you can still see how much cleanup there is left to do.
00:26 There were trampolines in people's ceilings.
00:29 And last night I spoke to a woman who had come down, it was her birthday, and she was
00:33 staying at the Parade Hotel and they were out for dinner when they got word that the
00:37 roof had literally been ripped off of their room.
00:40 Another young woman who I spoke to this morning actually was in the room at the time with
00:45 her mum.
00:46 She was down here for the hockey championships that they were having.
00:49 She was supposed to be playing today actually, but instead she's going back to Perth because
00:54 it's been such a traumatic event.
00:55 As you can imagine, they were literally inside when the roof collapsed on them and had to
00:59 crawl out from under that debris.
01:00 So it's so thankful that we haven't had reports yet of any serious injuries.
01:05 A few minor injuries though, there were two women who were taken from Parade Hotel and
01:09 another woman who was taken to hospital from the Caravan Park.
01:13 So a huge, huge effort from all the emergency services last night and a huge effort yet
01:18 to come in terms of the cleanup.
01:20 Yeah, we're just having a look at some of those pictures of the damage there now.
01:23 It's very significant.
01:25 And it was not very long ago that there was a tornado in Bunbury as well.
01:29 So how's the community feeling, given that, Bridget?
01:34 Yeah, I mean, pretty shook.
01:38 You'd think that maybe that they'd be used to it by now, but I think the tornado was
01:42 just such an outlier and something that a lot of people here hadn't experienced before.
01:47 We were kind of joking yesterday, a lot of people that, oh, you know, there's a storm
01:52 coming, hope it's not another tornado.
01:55 And so, I mean, people are pretty shocked actually that those things have come true.
02:00 Maybe we shouldn't have been joking about it.
02:02 And it does seem like this event was more localized than that one a few weeks ago.
02:07 But the damage that it managed to wreak in just this little pocket is really overwhelming.
02:13 And like everyone I spoke to said, the noise was just immense.
02:17 And there was lightning as well at the same time.
02:18 It just would have been a real chaotic scene, as you can imagine.
02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]