badly damaged at least 70 properties and injured 17 people in the Belgian town of Beauraing
said: "Even inside the buildings the wind has blown in and shattered windows and torn off doors
So on a material level it [the damage] is quite huge."
Drone footage – as can be seen in the video above – shows several homes had their roofs ripped off
while local media reported a school and a sports hall were also destroyed
One restaurant worker said that as the storm struck on Saturday evening: "Everybody was screaming and running in all directions
Restaurant owner Eddy Huysmans said: "Ten seconds were enough to blow away everything
Another resident told Reuters: "I walked down the stairs
opened the door and I saw that my wife's car had been blown into the garage."
The town's cultural center was set up to provide temporary shelter for victims of the storm
Almost a hundred houses and buildings in Beauraing (Namur province) were seriously damaged last night when heavy thunderstorms swept across the country
bringing strong gusts of wind and causing a "small tornado"
and listen to local residents that lost their house
"It must have been half past ten in the evening when it started"
Muriel lost her roof: "It's Sunday
The fire services will help people to move to a different place and to do the first clean-up
Mayor Marc Lejeune: "I didn't sleep last night
You can hear the constant ringing of my telephone
We visited a lot of people and found some solutions
But this was the last thing we needed after a year of Covid
It's difficult for the people to live with this
authorities have recorded damages on 93 houses
out of which ten are now considered inhabitable
Thirteen of them were sitting on a terrace when the tornado hit the town
Witnesses described the events as "apocalyptic"
The commune Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil was most affected by the storms
A tornado tore off the tip of the local church tower
meteorological services issued warnings due to the severity of the storms
several thousand households were without power
six houses were damaged to the point that they have become inhabitable
in the region of the national park "Utrechtse Heuvelrug"
thousands of trees broke because of the storm.