Jack Kamilian clearly remembers the sound he heard before a tree split his home in half at Tamborine Mountain, near Queensland's Gold Coast.
"Imagine being inside the mouth of a demolition grabber, and it just felt like 'crack, crack, crack'," he said.
"Then I said 'get out of here', and we just ran.
"We just missed it as it was coming down."
He still can't believe the damage the storm caused, despite his vivid memories of the "explosion" and his feeling of isolation.
"We just huddled in one room and then eventually we got across to some safety, but everything was flapping," he said.
"It just felt like it was only us, and then when we got out in the morning we realised the devastation was throughout the whole street."
The "tornado" that hit on Christmas Day was the "biggest disaster the region has ever faced", according to Scenic Rim mayor Greg Christensen.
He estimated 75 per cent of the region's residents had experienced some sort of impact, from power outages to losing entire homes.
"The devastation, the lack of access to roads, the lack of access to get to the properties, it's just been overwhelming for everyone," Mr Christensen said.
The small hinterland community of Tamborine Mountain is home to about 8,000 people whose houses are scattered through bushland, with no access to reticulated water supply.
To access running water, residents need power to operate pumps.
Mr Christensen said the council had brought in bottled water and portable toilets for residents without generators or who had damaged plumbing.
"Supplies have been made available today for people on a ration basis, because we've only got so much we can carry up at a time," he said.
He said council would begin doorknocking to ensure all residents had access to help.
"We're discovering more small pockets of people who have not been able to get out of their houses, that they have sheltered in place, and we're opening those roads to do more assessments," he said.
'We wouldn't have survived'
On Thursday, Richard Mailley was waiting for his insurance company to confirm where he would be staying the night, after his home received so much damage he feared it would be "bulldozed".
He was camping in northern New South Wales when the tornado splintered gum trees, which came down like a tonne of bricks on his Tamborine Mountain home.
"If we had spent Christmas at home, which was on the cards for a while, then yeah, we wouldn't have survived," Mr Mailley said.
Power remains out for thousands of residents across the Scenic Rim region after the "total loss" of the power network.
Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said 63 per cent of the network had been restored, but some people would remain reliant on generators for days.
"By the evening of December 31 this year we aim to have 90 per cent of power resupplied," he said.
But for Tamborine Mountain and Jimboomba residents, "those areas aren't able to have power restored, they'll need to have a power system rebuilt".
Mr Christensen said the council was working on long-term solutions to avoid the situation happening again.
"None of the solutions come quickly," he said.
"We're looking at the possibility of how we can disconnect one of our public facilities here on the mountain from what was the grid, and create a connection to bring in a generator."
Loading...Mr Christensen estimated up to 2,000 trees, some weighing more than eight tonnes each, were down across the region, and extra SES personnel had been deployed.
He said "pointing fingers" at the lack of warning from the Bureau of Meteorology was "childish" and unhelpful.
"There's plenty of time in the future to evaluate those things," he said,
"My job, our job, is to keep our community safe, keep them informed, try to find answers to problems and move forward to a better place."
Severe thunderstorms could return
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Felim Hanniffy said much of the state was under heatwave conditions, which were severe across south-east Queensland.
"This is going to compound with high humidity as well, so it's going to make conditions feel uncomfortable — in fact it might even feel oppressive," he said.
Some Brisbane suburbs could experience temperatures in the high 30s over the next few days.
He said residents in north Queensland, the Gulf and north-west Queensland were also facing severe conditions.
"This heat was caused by the trough that created all the widespread thunderstorm activity … as that system moved east, it dragged that hot air mass that was in the interior of Australia," he said.
"Isolated severe thunderstorms" could return to the south-east this weekend, he added.
"The Gold Coast and Brisbane potentially Saturday, and the risk of [storms] moving northward on Sunday," he said.
"But unlike the last few days, we are probably looking at a one- to two-day event before the system moves north."
Brisbane Water Police and Maritime Safety Queensland are expected to commence recovery efforts this morning of the overturned boat where three men died off Brisbane on Boxing Day.
Forty-eight-year-old Brisbane man Robert Holden was the third victim identified on the boat.
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2023-12-28 20:15:35Z
CBMib2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIzLTEyLTI5L3FsZC1wb3dlci10YW1ib3JpbmUtbW91bnRhaW4tc3Rvcm1zLW1vcmV0b24tYmF5LWJvYXQtcmVjb3ZlcmVkLzEwMzI3MDY1MNIBAA
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