Kingston-based flying instructor Kerry Conner feels lucky that everyone escaped last Friday’s near-hurricane force, 150 to 200km/hr winds alive, but the winds have decimated her long-standing aviation business.

“I’ve lost my entire business in one second,” says Kerry, whose aeroplane hangar blew apart, obliterating her four-seater Piper Pacer tail dragger aircraft inside during the massive winds.

Kerry and other locals say it was a miracle that nobody was killed with massive trees down, huge iron rooves flying wild and sheds and offices blown large distances and smashed to pieces.

Kerry and friend, Stu Campbell, who’d been visiting were in Kerry’s hangar trying to secure the aircraft as the winds picked up.

“We were in there until a couple of minutes before the roof and walls blew in, trying to tie down the plane,” she says.

One of the doors blew in so they got out quickly, just in time as the hangar collapsed, disintegrating within seconds.

“If Stu had continued to crouch under the wing, where he’d taken cover one second prior, he probably wouldn’t be alive,” says Kerry. “I got out to take a photo then went to film a video and got blown over flat on my face. You couldn’t stand up in it,” she says.

“It was the strength of a 3 hurricane. A lot of locals drew their curtains to protect themselves from shattering glass as they were sure windows and ranch sliders would blow in.”

Insurance assessors came to check out the devastation on Wednesday, but it’s been an emotional week of upheaval for Kerry losing her Ace Aviation flight instructing business of 22 years, 10 years based in Kingston out of a 30-year career.

“The tail dragger type of aircraft is really hard to replace. I’ve spent hours searching the internet and there are about three available between Australia and America,” she says. One door of her plane is about all that was left for this experienced instructor, who previously spent many years instructing for aero clubs around the country, including the local Wakatipu Aero Club.

She and Stu just stood back from a safer vantage point and watched in shock as the winds continued for two hours at more than 140 to 150km/hr.

“Then on darkness we got a call from the neighbours to say that a garage had ended up on the number nine hole of Kingston Golf Course. It had been torn clean off the foundations, walls and all, and, miraculously, my two boats in there and an Australian friend’s car were completely untouched,” says Kerry.

“The rooves off farmers’ sheds and hay barns blew off, and grazing sheep were picked up by the wind and blown some distance into the flooded Kingston Creek.” The sheep ended up in the lake with builders’ Portaloos, garden furniture and polystyrene building materials, which the locals and builders spent the weekend clearing out of the water. “Builders took away three large truckloads of rubbish on Monday, 40foot (12m) containers blew sideways, or flipped over completely.”

It’s been heartening that Kerry’s been inundated with offers from aviation friends in the North and South Islands of aircraft to use in her business. “Unfortunately I’ve had to turn them down because I have no hangar, which is ironically meant to protect a plane.”

Down the road at Fairlight, Real Country owner Laura Koot’s office blew away out of the paddock and she lost all of her merchandise, papers and office gear.

“There will be Real Country merchandise strewn from here to Stewart Island,” says Laura, who has just recently resumed her agriculture tourism business tours now that the borders are open. Fortunately the office blew up and over the fence not through it or the animals would’ve escaped onto the road. She had everything backed up and insured and nobody in the community was injured, so it’s just a matter of rebuilding, she says. “The paddock was a mess and my 30sqm standalone office is decimated. There’s only the base left in the paddock.”

The roof of the shed where she hosts her Contiki Group farm shows completely blew off, but in typical rural resourcefulness she managed to continue on with a tour yesterday (Thursday) with no roof overhead, “because it was fine”.

Both Kerry and Laura say the community rallied round to help each other amid power outages stretching 27 hours, which meant no water for residents on pumps, no phone, cellphone or internet connection. “People had to go door to door asking strangers so they could heat babies’ milk, or have water,” says Laura. “It was really dramatic down here.”