Patricia Seale was trapped — her home on Northwest 19th Lane hit by a falling tree Saturday.
The tree took down the roof and the carport, scaring her.
“It shook the whole house, and it made this loud boom,” Seale said. “It scared me so bad, I fell out of my chair, broke the arm of my chair, hurt my knee.”
Seale is disabled, she said. So, the situation has been tough.
“The longer the carport is hanging, the more it's twisting the front part of the house,” Seale said.
The tree did not just impact her, her roof and her son; it also impacted her washer and almost her car, which was parked underneath the carport. Her roof now has holes. She thought most of them were tarped up, but the roof continues to leak.
She and her son hope to have the remaining branches removed soon. She worries if the rest of the branches are not taken down, the rest of the house could come down.
David Seale, her son, lives with his mom. He's working to remove some of the branches. When the tree fell, they were sitting together in the living room, which is next to the carport.
“It almost kind of felt like an earthquake,” he said. “The way it hit the house so hard.”
They were not the only ones frightened. Neighbors came rushing out of their house to see if they were OK, he said.
“They actually thought the tree landed on their house,” David Seale said. “The guy was in the bed there and he said it hit our house so bad that it shook his bed.”
He said they are lucky the beams were sturdy enough; if not, he fears they would have been crushed.
“The lord was looking out for us,” he said.
To prevent further damage to the home, the Seales' friend Joseph Landers helped clear a few of the downed branches. Landers is a tree worker, and he said it took more than two hours to remove half of the tree. He left the other half because the structure is not stable.
“I didn't want to fall through the carport and take my leg off or break something,” Landers said.
David Seale said some branches are still hanging from the air about 45 feet up. They're moving. He worries they can fall at any point.
“It's ready to fall at any time,” Seale said. “If it falls and hits the house again, it's going to hit the same area and tear down the rest of what's standing.”