In the Gold Coast a family has made a lucky escape. The family of four survived the storm but now has to rebuild their home they only bought five months ago.
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00:00In just a matter of minutes, half of Daniel Spindler's home was destroyed.
00:06The father of two and his wife had been asleep when they got up to check their Reedy Creek
00:11house for damage.
00:12So I got up and I walked out to the lounge room and then crack.
00:17The couple were incredibly lucky to avoid tragedy.
00:20When we went back to the room, there was huge shards of glass in the bed.
00:24The tree had basically come over the house and branches had compressed the window and
00:28shattered the window in across the queen bed.
00:31It wasn't just Daniel's two young children inside.
00:34The family had a 15-year-old international exchange student sleeping upstairs.
00:39It would have been a terrifying experience for her, but she slept through the entire
00:43ordeal.
00:44While the family are counting their lucky stars, they're now mentally preparing for
00:48the long road to recovery.
00:50One minute we're kind of like, you know, thankful that we're here.
00:52Another minute we're kind of, we've got this, you know, we don't have a house to live in.
00:56Heavy winds and heavy rain whipped up by ex-tropical cyclone Alfred battered the Gold
01:00Coast region, uprooting trees and bringing down power lines.
01:04There was substantial damage to some residential properties and at Labrador, 25 people had
01:11to be evacuated.
01:14Almost 140,000 homes on the Gold Coast are still without power.
01:18Paulette Smith's is one of them.
01:20And we thought we got away with it and then we lost power from nine.
01:24Their home was badly damaged in the Christmas tornado of 2023 and lost power for seven days.
01:30We just were always playing Monopoly, playing games, playing stories and it was just felt
01:36like how families described the 80s.
01:42This time round, the family made sure they were prepared.
01:45We've got a generator now and we've got a backup plan.
01:49We have got bags packed.
01:50We had windows reinforced.
01:53We have got a whole bunch of perishables and non-perishables stocked.
01:57We had our emergency kit ready to go.
02:00This Pimpermar house is currently home to seven, with friends staying while their place
02:04is renovated.
02:05The power went out more than 24 hours ago.
02:08We've been advised it could be three days to two weeks before the power could be reconnected.