People are nervously waiting for their tornado-damaged homes in Levin to be assessed, with the mayor expecting the damage count to rise.
Several homes were badly damaged in Levin's tornado on Friday. Photo: Supplied
There are 24 properties still to be assessed after a tornado tore through part of the town on Friday morning, with seven others, including five residential properties, already deemed uninhabitable.
Plywood now covers smashed windows and tarpaulin has been placed over sections of the broken roof of Rhianna Sweetman's Weraroa Road home.
Beams around the property were also fractured, the guttering had collapsed, and insulation was spilled "everywhere" after ceiling tiles had fell down, she said.
Sweetman was expecting an insurance assessment by midweek - a wait she said was "a bit scary".
"We've been warned quite a few times that the weather's meant to pick back up and we're a bit worried that this roof is going to come off ... it's barely holding on."
Rhianna Sweetman's Weraroa Road home was damaged in Friday's tornado. Photo: Supplied
As first home buyers who only bought the property in December, Sweetman and her partner were "quite protective of the place" and were worried they would be told they could no longer live there.
"Our little happy home scenario's been shattered in front of us."
They stayed in the property over the weekend because they did not want to leave the home and their belongings vacant, noting a number of people had come onto the property uninvited to seemingly check out the tornado's aftermath.
Horowhenua District mayor Bernie Wanden was concerned the number of damaged properties could rise because the current count was "the obvious ones".
He thought the overall property damage would be "considerable" when including things like cars.
"There was quite a bit of debris blowing around, so that landed in different properties and I've even seen bits of iron embedded in walls of houses and things like that."
Rhianna Sweetman's Weraroa Road home was damaged in Friday's tornado in Levin. Photo: Supplied
Wanden said the coming days, beyond further damage assessments, would be about supporting the community "and getting their lives and their houses back together again".
He said they were "lucky" to have the Mayoral Relief Fund, which the council and central government had each put $100,000 into, to support work that "people can not do for themselves".
There was a mass clean-up effort on Saturday which had more than 250 volunteers.
One volunteer, Gavin Teal, said the turnout was "overwhelming" but also "good, people were pleased to see it".
He thought another effort would be needed because they had mainly only removed green waste and had to leave property damage as is until it was assessed.
The clean-up had left Levin at a stage where the "tangled, mangled iron" and other debris was contained to property sections, Teal said.
