LUCK was on the side of two families after a “tornado” tore through bushland near Daylesford, causing widespread damage on Saturday night.
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High winds caused damage throughout the Hepburn Regional Park from Eganstown to Daylesford, blowing over hundreds of trees and closing a section of Midland Highway for most of the night.
Tracey Wanke was out celebrating her stepson’s 21st birthday in Hepburn Springs when she received a call from a neighbour at 8pm, informing her that the roof had blown off their Eganstown home.
“We are very lucky. We sleep in that bedroom where the roof came off,” Ms Wanke said.
“You take so much pride in your house; now, it’s destroyed.”
Tracey and her husband Donald were in a state of shock on Sunday as they sifted through the wreckage.
“I’m a shattered man,” Mr Wanke said.
Ms Wanke said she and her husband rarely left the property or went out at night.
“We survived Black Saturday out here with the winds and couldn’t open the doors. You can only imagine what it was like last night,” she said.
Roof insulation and metal from the house was found high up in nearby gum trees.
Dozens of trees across the property had been snapped in half, while others were uprooted.
Most of the road signs in the area were bent in half.
Casey Halliwell and her parents were also lucky to emerge from the storm without injury after fallen trees flattened buildings on their property.
Ms Halliwell, who lives a few hundred metres east of the Wanke household on the Midland Highway, described hearing a “roar” of wind before flying debris started hitting the house just before 8pm.
“I don’t actually remember; I was just in shock. I was in the room and I just heard the roar,” Ms Halliwell said.
“It’s just a sense of amazement.”
Ms Halliwell said the episode lasted one minute and that her mother was on the porch and saw trees horizontal in the wind.
Other residents told her the wind was swirling “like a tornado”.
Ms Halliwell’s father, Mike, said he had never seen anything like it at the property, which had been owned by the family for 40 years.
“(I’ve seen) nothing ever like this. But the house and all the cars are still standing,” he said.