PYLA was yesterday assessing the damage after a tornado passed through the area on Tuesday morning.
The Secretary of Pyla Council, Stavros Stavrou said that, “roughly 50 homes have been affected, with slate blown off roofs and windows smashed. Cars were also damaged, and water tanks have been completely destroyed. Trees were also upended in the carnage.
“Most people can still stay in their homes but will need to take action to repair their water network.” He stressed that they did have access to water and that Pyla Council was taking action to help them in any way they could and was cleaning up the damage.
Pyla’s Greek Cypriot mukhtar Christakis Antoniou added that a lot of families would need state assistance and praised the Electricity Authority and CyTA for restoring electricity and telephone lines.
The deputy Turkish Cypriot mukhtar of Pyla, Nejdet Enver, yesterday told the Cyprus Mail that two people had sustained injuries. “One was a Turkish Cypriot man who was struck by metal debris flying through the air, with the other an elderly Greek Cypriot who sustained head injuries caused by a flowerpot.
According to Larnaca Press, 86-year-old Charalambos Savva was treated at Larnaca General Hospital before returning to his home.
Enver went on to say that five or six houses were badly damaged, with the rest of the 30 houses sustaining damage to their windows, water tanks and satellite dishes. “There was also a lot of damage to pens, where sheep and goats had been kept.”
The cost to the Turkish Cypriot part of Pyla is estimated to be in the region of £600,000-£700,000.
Head of the Meteorological Services Kyriacos Theofilou described the tornado as small, adding that he could not give an accurate figure of the wind speed, “as it’s not possible to forecast when and where these types of local phenomena will appear.”
He also said that their life span was usually only five to 10 minutes.
Fire Services spokeswoman Liza Kemijee said they arrived on the scene shortly afterwards at 11am and stayed in the village for seven hours, helping with the clean-up operation.
She explained that some of the people affected had stayed with friends and family overnight, as their homes were not in a habitable state.
The tornado also damaged the nearby villages of Makrasyka, Ayios Theodoros and Engomi in the occupied north, with Turkish Cypriot newspapers stating that numerous homes and 50 vehicles had been damaged.
Gunes newspaper sympathised with the people of Makrasika, saying the village, which was recently at the centre of a bird flu scare, “has now been hit by this latest disaster”.
Halkin Sesi claims that 50 car windscreens were damaged by a hailstorm in Lefkoniko village.
‘Interior Minister’ Ozkan Murat said the regime would stand by the side of all affected people while ‘Prime Minister’ Ferdi Sabit Soyer was planning to visit the area for an on-site inspection. “The damage is great but we will overcome it by working together,” he said.
A TORNADO is a violently spinning column of air in contact with both a cloud base and the surface. It is typically shaped like a funnel with the narrow end on the ground. Tornadoes are known for being extremely destructive and are usually due to water vapour from clouds and debris from the ground.
Tornadoes are developed from thunderstorms and are believed to be produced when cool air overrides a layer of warm air, forcing the warm air to rise rapidly.
They form in storms all over the world.
