Debris from garage roof blown more than a mile

FLYING debris from the roof of Le Mont Saint Garage ripped down a 6ft chimney on a nearby house. Jean Crabb lives 300 yards up the road from the garage and returned from Sunday lunch to find the stack had been knocked to the ground by a flying sheet of aluminium.

As she made her way to her house, neighbours warned that the chimney had just come through the roof.

'I started to think all sorts of things and wondered if the dogs had been killed,' said the Rue des Hougues resident yesterday.

'It was such a relief just to see that it had not fallen through the roof but been knocked down and that it was outside the house. It is not as bad as it could have been.'

The house will now need a new chimney, there has been some damage to the roof and the carpets will need cleaning to get rid of soot.

Because the television aerial was also brought down, she has had to miss Emmerdale, her favourite programme.

It was just after 1pm on Sunday when the garage workshop roof was ripped off by storm force 10 winds that gusted to 54 knots.

Mr Beausire said an 8ft by 4ft piece of insulation had been found in a garden more than a mile away at the other side of the reservoir, past St Saviour's Church.

It was just over a year ago that Mr Beausire watched in horror as part of the garage went up in a fire. The repaired roofing was completed only in May.

'To put my feelings into words is very difficult at the moment.

'You just cannot believe that something like this would happen again, but we are lucky that no one has been injured or killed.

'This is an inconvenience, but it is not a disaster like the tsunami. You cannot compare this to how people felt who had their lives shattered. This can be fixed,' he said.

Yesterday the forecourt and showroom were open as usual, but the workshop was providing emergency cover only.

Mr Beausire said that because it was only the outer skin of the roof that had come off, it had been possible to make it watertight and the department would be open as usual today.

He added that his insurer had now put the matter in the hands of a loss adjuster and surveyor.