Village.
p. 38 · Read in the full issue
Waterspout Hits Cook
Islands
Houses Wrecked in Arorangi Village.
From Our Own Correspondent
Rarotonga, Nov. 3.
SWIRLING in from the ocean on the evening of October 14, a waterspout wrecked a number of houses in the village of Arorangi.
It had been a wet Sunday, and by eight o’clock everybody was indoors. Unob served, the column of water travelled across the lagoon, decreasing in volume as it approached the shore, from whence it passed inland as a furious funnel of air.
Careering up the village, it stripped the roofs of four houses, wrecking the veran dahs of several others. Twenty fowls roosting in a tree disappeared completely, and many sheets of galvanised iron were wrapped like paper around the branches of adjacent trees.
Mr. Peter Callaghan, disabled ex-soldier, was in his room at Tapai Pirangi’s store when the baby cyclone struck the prem ises. “I was just undressing,” he said, “when there was a report like a pistol-shot overhead, and the roof went. The force of the wind was terrific; it held me up against the wall for fully 30 seconds. The floor mats were whipped off the ground and I thought the whole house was coming down! ”
Fortunately nobody was seriously in jured, although several persons received minor cuts and bruises occasioned by the falling and broken debris of their homes.