Strong winds have wreaked havoc in Canberra, with a Colorbond fence ripped from the ground on a construction site in Gungahlin and debris blown into parked cars at an apartment building next door.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Infinity Towers resident Abbey Ison posted a video, taken from her 18th-storey apartment, on Facebook showing panels from the fence being blown around the car park below.
"[I] went outside to see the fence panels flying everywhere, hitting cars very roughly, causing big scrapes on bonnets," she said.
She said she even spotted a panel flying across the road and narrowly missing cars.
WorkSafe ACT commissioner Greg Jones said an inspector had visited the construction site that the fence panels had come from.
Mr Jones said the "quite vigorous winds" of Saturday afternoon had torn apart a Colorbond fence that had been erected on a construction site next door to Infinity Towers.
He said WorkSafe had contacted Core Developments, the company operating on the construction site, and workers from the company had attended the site to secure the fence panels.
"The inspector said there were also some ACT road signs in the area that had been damaged, so the wind was obviously quite vigorous," Mr Jones said.
Mr Jones said while the fence incident had not involved loose materials, it should remind builders of the damage strong winds could cause if materials were not properly secured on their sites.
As strong winds lashed Canberra, power outages were reported in Dunlop, Latham, Macgregor and Waramanga. Evoenergy had restored power to all those suburbs by 10.30pm.
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Rob Taggart said the bureau had two ACT sites that measured wind speed - located at Canberra Airport and in the Tuggeranong suburb of Isabella Plains.
Mr Taggart said Canberra's top wind speed for Saturday - 69 kilometres an hour - had been recorded at the airport at 4.40pm.
Just one minute later, the bureau issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds in areas including high parts of the ACT.
"We do expect there to still be fresh and gusty winds into the evening," Mr Taggart said just after 6pm on Saturday.
"But we expect they will ease as the evening goes on.
"Tomorrow we would only expect average wind speeds of about 25 kilometres an hour, getting up to around 30."