One Gold Coast family making a lucky escape

ABC NEWS (Australia)

In the Gold Coast a family has made a lucky escape. The family of four survived the storm but now has to rebuild their home they only bought five months ago.

Transcript

00:00In just a matter of minutes, half of Daniel Spindler's home was destroyed.

00:06The father of two and his wife had been asleep when they got up to check their Reedy Creek

00:11house for damage.

00:12So I got up and I walked out to the lounge room and then crack.

00:17The couple were incredibly lucky to avoid tragedy.

00:20When we went back to the room, there was huge shards of glass in the bed.

00:24The tree had basically come over the house and branches had compressed the window and

00:28shattered the window in across the queen bed.

00:31It wasn't just Daniel's two young children inside.

00:34The family had a 15-year-old international exchange student sleeping upstairs.

00:39It would have been a terrifying experience for her, but she slept through the entire

00:43ordeal.

00:44While the family are counting their lucky stars, they're now mentally preparing for

00:48the long road to recovery.

00:50One minute we're kind of like, you know, thankful that we're here.

00:52Another minute we're kind of, we've got this, you know, we don't have a house to live in.

00:56Heavy winds and heavy rain whipped up by ex-tropical cyclone Alfred battered the Gold

01:00Coast region, uprooting trees and bringing down power lines.

01:04There was substantial damage to some residential properties and at Labrador, 25 people had

01:11to be evacuated.

01:14Almost 140,000 homes on the Gold Coast are still without power.

01:18Paulette Smith's is one of them.

01:20And we thought we got away with it and then we lost power from nine.

01:24Their home was badly damaged in the Christmas tornado of 2023 and lost power for seven days.

01:30We just were always playing Monopoly, playing games, playing stories and it was just felt

01:36like how families described the 80s.

01:42This time round, the family made sure they were prepared.

01:45We've got a generator now and we've got a backup plan.

01:49We have got bags packed.

01:50We had windows reinforced.

01:53We have got a whole bunch of perishables and non-perishables stocked.

01:57We had our emergency kit ready to go.

02:00This Pimpermar house is currently home to seven, with friends staying while their place

02:04is renovated.

02:05The power went out more than 24 hours ago.

02:08We've been advised it could be three days to two weeks before the power could be reconnected.

Category

Transcript

Recommended