Winds of up to 100 kmph slam the region

“We were inside, and it just hit us like a big brick wall. The ceiling panels came off and the whole house was shaking. Doors and windows shaking, pictures smashing everywhere and next minute all the water started coming through.

"It was scary because you didn’t know what was around you, it was pitch black, there was no electricity, there were lightning strikes everywhere, rain wherever you stood and you could just hear the sheet panels get ripped to pieces," he said.

“I’m very, very happy with the efforts of our volunteers. It’s great that a number of people continue to put their hands up time and time again, working till 2am in the morning and getting up at 10am to get back to it. I’m very proud of our volunteers they did a sterling job,” said Mr Kiehne.

“It was amazing how many local council roads were blocked as we were trying to get to places, we just kept having to clear debris. On Mialla Road, Balladoran, we probably had to clear off six trees," said Mr Kiehne.

Mr Kiehne said that though this storm in particular was wider than usual, causing damage on a roughly five-kilometre-wide front, these kinds of weather events are not unusual at this time of year.

“Those wild and angry storms are usually quite narrow, they tend not to damage broad areas of property but the storm on Saturday night was quite broad. It was probably five kilometres of power outages, mobile outages and general storm damage. It was probably wider than what one might expect but that sort of storm activity isn’t unusual.”