A tornado on Thursday demolished houses, lifted roofs and crumpled caravans in the Australian east coast town of Lennox Head, according to dpa. A dozen houses were demolished and roofs carried 250 metres across streets in the tourist town in northern New South Wales. The early morning twister rushed through with winds of 150 kilometres per hour in a storm that also brought 150 millimetres of rain. Police Inspector Gary Cowan said 17 people were in emergency accommodation because their houses were uninhabitable. "When we look at the damage, it's just a miracle that no one was seriously injured or killed," he said. Surfer Dirk Terrill said he saw the tornado come ashore with two distinct waterspouts. "There was one coming up the beach, and the other one just went through the middle of Lennox, so we could literally hear the roofs getting ripped off the buildings and smashing into ... trees and that sort of thing," he told the public broadcaster ABC.
