A clear-up operation was under way tonight at a caravan park left devastated by a mini tornado.

More than 200 mobile homes are thought to have been damaged at the West Sands Caravan Park in Selsey.

Many were overturned and others had their roofs ripped open by a freak gust of wind estimated at around 150mph.

One witness said: "Some of them look just like sardine cans."

Elaine Collins, of Cobham, Surrey, was staying at the caravan park with husband Paul and children Luke, 16, Ashley, 14, and Tiffany, ten.

Mrs Collins said: "We saw one caravan with its roof ripped off and another one lying on its side with the windows smashed in.

"Another had been blown on top of another one and there were puddles of water everywhere. There was also a car with a really bad dent down the side.

"It hasn't really sunk in yet how close we all came to getting really badly hurt. We had a lucky escape, especially since we were so close to the sea."

Two people were cut by flying glass. One of them is thought to have been an Environment Agency worker who was shoring up shingle sea defences when his bulldozer window shattered.

Structural experts were also checking the site's recently refurbished Embassy Ballroom, which had most of its windows blasted out.

But fears that major flooding could add to the misery failed to materialise at today's lunchtime high tide.

A shingle bank, the site's only protection from the sea, stood firm although there was some minor flooding on roads at the seafront end of the site.

Many of the caravans are used as weekend homes and were empty when the whirlwind ripped through the campsite at about 7.10am today.

Meanwhile Bognor, which was struck by a tornado on Saturday evening, was not as badly affected as the emergency services had feared.

Despite gusts of up to 90mph, police said this morning that damage had been relatively minor.