A Bell Block chicken farmer says the tornado that hit him this morning was "like a bloody train coming up the track".
John Bamford, who runs a free range chicken farm on Paraite Road just north of New Plymouth, had a tornado hit his home about 9.30 this morning as wild weather battered the region .
He was sitting down eating his breakfast when he noticed it coming out the window.
"I just saw it coming, I thought f***, cause I'm sitting here having my breakfast - I jumped up and I roared in and grabbed my TV in case that went over.
"It was like a bloody train coming up the track - a big roar and it's flattened trees out the front and annihilated my garden shed," Mr Bamford said.
"The wife got chucked against the house, she's just gone to hospital with a broken collar bone and a couple of other injuries.
"It's put a chair, one of my ones on the patio out the front here, about 500m away in a paddock up the road - it's flown in the air.
"It sucked the fridge out of the wall and there's food everywhere.
"Now we've got to try and clean the bloody show up."
The tornado had damaged his roof, sucked the windows out of three rooms and left debris all over the house.
"At least my chicken sheds weren't too badly damaged - we've got free range chickens but they weren't out at the time, so that was alright," Mr Bamford said.
"It's taken all the fence line out and the powerlines up the road, so they're pulling those down now."
Mr Bamford said he hadn't been expecting it, because it seemed to be quite calm.
"It was still, and the minute it went past, there was nothing - dead silence," he said.
"It was real quick - it was only seconds - within two or three seconds, that's all it was."
Mr Bamford said he has often worried about tornados in the area, because he's seen a few, but had thus far been lucky.
"I've caught the edges of a few, and now my neighbour has dropped a whole lot of pine trees on the hillside, which has given me a good view of Bell Block, but in the past it's sort of diverted them I think," Mr Bamford said.
"But it's come right up that valley, this one, and gone straight through me.
"I've always worried about one hitting but I've seemed to miss them.
"But I didn't miss this bastard."
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