Thousands of properties lose power as high winds and hailstones hit Brisbane

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Work is under way to restore power to thousands of properties in south-east Queensland, where residents were hit with five-centimetre hailstones, as well as wind gusts nearing 100 kilometres per hour.

Transcript

00:00It's pretty extensive what we're seeing here in the southeast corner.

00:05As you can see, massive trees have been brought down.

00:09I'm here in Sherwood at the local Aussie Rules football club

00:12where their goalposts have actually been brought down in this storm.

00:16As you can see, some pretty large gum trees have fallen on those posts

00:20and brought them all down.

00:22Now, this happened last night when those winds of...

00:25The Bureau of Meteorology has told us 50 knots.

00:28Locals say it felt like far, far more than that,

00:30ripping through this Graceville-Chelma area in that southwest corner of Brisbane.

00:35Now, we've heard there was not much rainfall as part of this storm

00:39because of how quickly it tore through the region.

00:42Now, we did see enormous hailstones,

00:44well over that categorisation of giant by the Weather Bureau.

00:48So those were tearing through people's roofs.

00:50We've seen plenty of pictures of them sort of hailing down.

00:53Now, we've been speaking to locals in this area this morning

00:56about what they've come out to this morning.

00:59There's some pretty severe destruction on the streets.

01:01Here's what they told us this morning.

01:03It's chaotic, just incredible.

01:05I haven't seen anything like this for a long time.

01:07So, very disruptive, yeah.

01:09And the winds were massive yesterday, just extraordinary.

01:12Hectic, with all the trees coming down across the road and stuff.

01:17It was scary.

01:18It was really scary.

01:21So, no doubt, an incredibly long day of clean-up here in Brisbane.

01:26The weather is sort of turning it on now.

01:28You wouldn't know that last night we were in the midst of such a severe thunderstorm.

01:32We've spoken to plenty of locals who say that there's lots of work to be done

01:36at their place with pools filled with trees.

01:39We've seen cars with their glass smashed by falling branches.

01:42The SES was called out almost 900 times across the southeast corner last night.

01:49Most of that was for leaky roofs and fallen branches.

01:53Fortunately, no Queenslanders were seriously injured last night.

01:57So, they managed to stay safe during what was a pretty scary storm

02:01that tore through the region.

02:03But this is, no doubt, just the beginning for a Queensland summer storm season.

02:07So, plenty more of this to come, unfortunately.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended