11 homes condemned after three-day cleanup following Armidale tornado natural disaster

The SES wound up a huge weekend clean-up effort on Sunday, after responding to 273 jobs in three days.

Streets all over the city were left in ruins after Armidale was struck by a tornado on Thursday night, flipping cars, slicing through power lines and trashing scores of homes.

Armidale SES Incident Control Centre Operations Officer Jock Campbell said the natural disaster had drawn in about 180 personnel, including crews from as far as the North Coast and the Hunter Valley.

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Council chief officer of assets and services Alex Manners said an extraordinary number of locals pitched in to help out the professionals.

"Easily hundreds of different volunteers, including community members and local businesses [helped out]. Phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal," he said.

Council crews have assessed over 200 homes for structural damage.

Eleven houses have been condemned as uninhabitable and taped off. Nine of them have been assessed as likely to be demolished by Armidale council staff. One home is partially uninhabitable.

The final human injury tally remains at zero.

No animals have been reported injured in the incident either.

The federal government joined the state government in declaring the incident a natural disaster on Sunday, making Armidale residents whose homes or belongings were damaged eligible for financial support.

Armidale Regional Council will receive support to pay the cost of cleaning up and restoring damaged public assets and small businesses and farmers will have access to loans with concessional interest rates.

Mr Manners said most council assets including their water production and sewage facilities that had been knocked out by the storm are once again functional.

Full water production wasn't restored until Friday night, and the University of New England reservoir is still out of action.

The sewerage treatment plant was the first utility to get back up and running, he said.

Armidale council will accept green waste and other debris green generated by the storm without usual waste charges, and is working to organise waste metal disposal.

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The SES incident control centre finally closed on Sunday afternoon as the clean-up works wound up after three days of work.

As of Sunday afternoon, the SES had responded to 266 jobs, with seven outstanding, Mr Campbell said.

"To get that number below 10 in that amount of time is just an amazing response," he said.

"We're really really really happy."

The tornado was a first for the local SES Deputy Unit Commander.

"This is something new so it's been an interesting learning for the unit. We couldn't have done it without the support of our bother and sister units plus the support of other agencies such as RFS, Fire and Rescue VRA, they were all absolutely more than happy to pitch in and help out," he said.

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