A whirlwind wreaked havoc this morning in Erica’s horticultural area. In any case, cucumber grower Polman was hit. Some of the greenhouses have been destroyed.
“It was a strip of about twenty meters wide,” says owner Hans Polman. “Entire blocks have been destroyed: the glass has been blown to pieces and we have yet to see if the structure is damaged.”
The employees were just working in the affected areas. “How much bad luck can you have. There are forty pieces, and in the first two we were working. Those are the ones that have been hit.”
The people who were in the greenhouse were very shocked, but they came out reasonably well physically. “The screens were still closed, and they caught a lot of the glass.” As a result, no one was seriously injured, although some were covered by glass. The nursery staff is taken care of by the company.
Polman cannot yet say what the damage is after the whirlwind. “It is about 7,000 square meters that we have to repair. And where we can’t harvest: apart from the glass damage, the climate can no longer be controlled. So that is lost.” The damage will certainly run into tens of thousands of euros, and if the construction of the greenhouses is also damaged, it will increase.
The company estimates that it will take about four weeks for the greenhouses to be repaired. In addition to Polman, Nursery Boomkamp and Sunny Orchids were also damaged. The owner of the latter company says he has no idea yet what the total damage will be. The staff came out of the greenhouses unscathed after the storm.
Look below for an impression of the damage at Sunny Orchids: