Thousands of homes throughout New South Wales are still without power and a severe weather warning remains in place for large parts of the state. Wind speeds of more than 100 kilometres per hour were clocked in some areas this afternoon including in Sydney’s CBD. While the state government is assessing whether to make a natural disaster declaration in the Hunter Valley region.
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00:00In Lauriton, on the state's mid-north coast, a retail and residential building is without
00:07a roof.
00:08Two tenants in their 40s and 50s, who were inside their homes at the time, made it out
00:12uninjured and are now in temporary holiday accommodation.
00:16It was the loudest bang and like we ran out and that whole roof was just sitting there.
00:24My rabbit was here so I ran out, grabbed the rabbit.
00:28Sydney has been hit by more wild weather, with persistent gale force winds bringing
00:32down power lines in some areas.
00:35We have seen wind gusts in excess of 90 to 110 kilometres an hour, particularly along
00:39those kites sites around the Sydney, Illawarra and Central Coast.
00:43Two people were taken to hospital with minor injuries after a tree fell on top of them
00:47at Hyde Park in the CBD.
00:49Coming into peak hour, it's incredibly lucky that there weren't more people on Elizabeth
00:54Street.
00:55It's a very busy area for pedestrians and for traffic.
00:58In the Hunter, the region's peak business body is lobbying for the state government
01:02to establish a natural disaster declaration.
01:05One of its energy companies, Ausgrid, today dealing with more than 50,000 outages.
01:10We've had teams in the field 24-7 trying to restore that power and have done a large amount
01:17of that within this area.
01:19In Nelson Bay, a five-star resort has lost dozens of bookings.
01:23This is our peak season.
01:24This is where we make the bulk of our money for the year and Port Stephens is a tourism
01:29hub.
01:30The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting more thunderstorms on Saturday, which could be
01:34severe on the northern half of the coast and the SES says some homes might not have power
01:39until early next week.
01:41A wet weekend in store for many at the height of summer.