Could have been so much worse, police say of Thursday's tornado

The extreme weather event destroyed property and downed trees and powerlines.

District Commander, Superintendent Bob Noble, said the role of the police was to direct the operations of the rescue services that "were there to render the powerlines, roads and dwellings safe".

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Everyone was very co-operative during the response effort.

"There was a lot of participation by other rescue agencies, county council, and Essential Energy and all those sort of people. It was all hands on deck and a good job done," Supt Noble said.

Police remained there for several hours on Thursday and returned to those impacted communities on Friday morning to further review the situation, utilising the expertise of PolAir to conduct an aerial survey.

Supt Noble said residents were feeling "quite unlucky" and left "scratching their heads" after the sudden weather event, but he noted how fortunate it was that no-one was killed.

"It was potentially an extremely dangerous situation. It was an incredibly intense and powerful storm. It's actually quite surprising no-one was much more seriously injured or killed in the circumstances," he said.

"Quite possibly if those two weather events touched down in a big town like Bathurst it could have been, certainly, a lot worse."

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