His wife and two granddaughters, aged 12 and 10, huddled in the living room as he, armed with torches, did a quick house inspection of his Dallas Avenue property.

Mr Ryan knew something was wrong when he went to open the spare bedroom’s door and found it jammed ... by a tree.

“I was met with water pouring in and the ceiling caving,”Mr Ryan said.

“This was the worst adventure I’ve been in for a long time.

“We had a lot of stuff to clear out of the room to try and minimise our loss.

“I had the good help of my sons and son-in-law, got to bed at 2.15am and was up at 7am to check the damage in the cool light of day.

“It was a pretty graphic sight.”

The Ryans had three trees struck in their front yard – one was completely uprooted, another was split “like a matchstick”.

Mr Ryan said the big tree on his roof posed the biggest problem, with SES crews working on Saturday afternoon to determine the best way to remove it.

Power to his house came back on at noon, about 15 hours after his family was plunged into a blackout.

Mr Ryan said that apart from the bedroom, and its immediate surrounds, the rest of the house was livable.

They just could not use the spare bedroom until the roof was declared stable.

Whether the house could be repaired before Christmas was another matter, depending on availability of tradespeople and swiftness of insurance companies.

But he said Christmas plans could be modified.

Mr Ryan was most thankful his granddaughters were not in the spare bedroom when the tree struck.