The town of Bunbury are still recovering from the effects of a tornado

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Homeowners in Bunbury, impacted by Friday's tornado are wrestling with the difficult decision of trying to salvage their homes or call in the bulldozers.

Transcript

00:00 Elaine Bartles was sitting on the end of her bed when the tornado slammed into her house

00:06 without warning.

00:07 Next minute I heard this bang in the bedroom and I just sort of stood up and the whole

00:13 roof has caved in, just missed me and there's a massive big beam across the bed with nails

00:21 and that in it.

00:22 She went outside to investigate.

00:24 And then it was all coming towards me.

00:25 There was a roof, there was glass, there was timber.

00:30 Elaine took shelter under the door frame until the danger passed.

00:33 Felt like it might have been a couple of minutes but someone said it's only eight seconds.

00:38 That's all it took for her home to be ripped apart.

00:41 Her husband Doug wasn't home when it struck.

00:43 When he saw the state their house was in, he was relieved to find Elaine safe.

00:47 The next thing that struck me is all our debris off our roof had been scattered pretty well

00:52 all over the suburb and the one thing that I was real concerned about was that somebody

00:56 was going to be hurt by it and I'm really glad that no one was actually hurt by that.

01:00 That would have been bloody awful.

01:02 Friday's freak tornado saw wind so powerful they picked up this steel beam from the roof

01:06 of Doug and Elaine's car garage hurling it into bushland across from their house.

01:11 The tornado damaged 220 homes in Bunbury, 16 severely and 9 deemed uninhabitable.

01:18 Authorities are continuing to warn people to stay away from asbestos.

01:21 Obviously with the tornado there's damage to properties, fences etc that contained asbestos

01:27 materials.

01:28 It's been scattered around the area.

01:30 They are also warning of more bad weather this weekend.

01:33 And although the timber looks pretty bad and when you look on the inside it looks like

01:37 a war zone, the actual structural it can be recouped.

01:42 Many homeowners are now deciding whether to repair or rebuild.

01:45 We really urge residents to make sure that their properties are prepared and those that

01:50 have been in the impact area have taken actions to secure their houses from further damage.

01:55 A long road to recovery as winter approaches.

01:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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