Flying trampoline excites Ward kids

Wild winds last Friday whisked a Ward family's Christmas trampoline from their yard into power lines, dropping bits of it just beside the school principal's car.

"It took four hours to put together, and 10 seconds to go over the fence," said Toska Bayly, who had assembled the trampoline for her children on Christmas Eve.

High winds on Friday afternoon smashed the present to pieces and left part of it dangling from powerlines, and another segment centimetres from Willem Lampe's car.

Mr Lampe is principal of Ward School, which is just across the road from the Baylys' house.

Mrs Bayly said she knew the trampoline was in a vulnerable spot as the winds picked up, but she thought she had time to pop inside and put on a sweatshirt before moving it.

It turns out she didn't.

Nobody was around to be hurt by the flying trampoline, and she was pleased it had not happened half an hour earlier during the end of the school day pick-up rush.

Mrs Bayly said it started raining heavily in Ward about 2.40pm and "about 3.20pm the wind whipped up and that was that".

Her children appeared to find the trampoline's demise exciting. Tegan, 3, said: "It blew away and was in the sky."

"I'm horrified and they are all excited," said her mother.

The high winds also did some damage at the East Coast Inn in Ward.

Owner Amy McDougall said the wind picked up a wooden outdoor table and blew it on to another table.

It made a lot of noise and she thought it was going to come in through the front window.

Meanwhile a window in the kitchen smashed from the force of the wind and "then I looked out the window and the chiller door was flying through the air".

By 5pm, the sun was out and the gales were a topic of conversation over end-of-week drinks at the hotel.

A man who worked at Dominion Salt said the wind came through with sudden force.

"We do get quite high winds, but it was one of the strongest ones we've had for a while. You wouldn't have wanted to be grubbing nasella on the cliffs or surf casting."

Another man said he was driving behind the school bus at Grassmere when it appeared to have been hit by a gust and swerved on the road.

"It was unbelievable, it came down the hill and it weaved across the road."

Marlborough Lines operations manager Brian Tapp said the flying trampoline left one customer without power for about an hour, while the outer saltworks lost power for an hour after lines clashed in the high winds.

Several other areas had momentary blackouts, likely because of the many lightning strikes across the district.

These included State Highway 1 near the Awatere Valley turnout, the Cloudy Bay Industrial Park and Kenepuru Sound.

A 33,000-volt line from Blenheim to Rai Valley also blacked out briefly, he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News