Storm whips through inner-city, damaging historic venue

A brief but violent storm that ripped through inner-Brisbane on Friday night has severely damaged a popular riverfront venue.

New Farm’s Officers Mess, a repurposed World War II-era US naval base, had parts of its roof ripped off at the height of the storm about 7.50pm.

The venue will likely remain closed for months, general manager Alex Sey said, with the first cancellation an Australia Day barbecue planned for Sunday.

Sey said the part of the roof that had been ripped from the river side of the venue into the Oxlade Drive car park had been removed by lunchtime on Saturday.

“The front car park has been completely cleaned up, all the damage there with the car that was underneath it,” he said.

“It’ll look like a clean site by the end of the day – fortunately, we’ve got some good people that we can get to it.”

Rebuilding would be a much longer process, Sey said, with the popular riverfront venue – which only opened in April – set to be out of action for some time.

The roof peeled over the historic venue to land on top of a vehicle in the car park.Credit: Cameron Atfield

“We obviously have to go back and do some construction drawings and decide what we want to do out there now,” he said.

“It then has to go for approvals. Then we need to source materials, and then we need to get a gap in our contracts and schedules to actually do it as well, so I’d be hoping for three months.”

Sey said there was no damage to the function space, which he aimed to have reopened by February 3.

“It’s very unfortunate, but nobody got hurt, which is the main thing,” he said.

Up to 100 patrons were reportedly in the venue at the time, with some comparing the storm’s force to a cyclone.

Paramedics treated one person at the scene, but a Queensland Ambulance Service spokesperson said they declined transport to hospital.

Shane Kennedy from the Bureau of Meteorology said the Officers Mess was unlucky to be so severely hit, given that wind gusts recorded at nearby weather stations did not reach anywhere near what would be considered a “severe observation”.

The morning after… the riverside area at New Farm’s Officers Mess on Saturday.Credit: Cameron Atfield

The strongest recorded wind gust was 74km/h at Redcliffe at 8.41pm, Kennedy said, while the closest weather stations to New Farm recorded 41km/h (Brisbane City) and 48km/h (Brisbane Airport).

“Certainly the instruments sort of south and north of it didn’t pick up anything, so it may just be more localised to the damage there,” the meteorologist said.

“It can often be the case, unfortunately, that wind can be really very localised.”

Kennedy said large hail was also reported around Beaudesert, to the south of Brisbane.

Brisbane City Council did not report any major damage from the storm, other than a few fallen trees.

Only 4.8 millimetres of rain was reported in the city, but it was concentrated in a 10-minute burst.

As destructive as it was, the storm did have a cooling effect on Brisbane, which had sweltered through a high of what felt like 40.5 degrees about 3pm, although the actual temperature was 35.4 degrees.

At the time of the storm, the temperature plummeted from 31 to 25 degrees within about half an hour.

Kennedy said the week’s heatwave conditions had passed, and storms were unlikely during the long weekend.

“We may see a few isolated, very light showers the next few days, maybe inland, but it’s really only about a 5 to 10 per cent chance for the city, so it shouldn’t really interrupt anyone’s plans,” he said.

“It probably won’t be until late next week – Friday, Saturday – that we might have some showers return. Until then, we’ll get a break from the storms, and even from the showers.”

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