Tue, October 5, 2004
Toppled tree terror
Uprooted by wind, falls on roof
By DAVID SCHMEICHEL, STAFF REPORTER
You can't blame
Peter Woods for feeling a bit rattled by Sunday night's weather. The
St. James resident was standing just metres away from his Vavasour
Avenue home when a gust of wind uprooted a decades-old tree in his
backyard and deposited it on to his roof of his two-storey home.
"It's one
thing to have a tree fall down, it's another thing to be standing right
beside it when it does," said Woods. "If I'd have come out of the house
10 seconds later, it might have fallen right on my head."
Woods was
watching the tree -- which he'd been thinking about pruning -- from a
main-floor window Sunday evening. He stepped outside to investigate
when he noticed a branch had fallen off.
The next thing he knew, he was watching the tree -- which he guesses to be at least 60 years old -- being blown onto the roof.
'CRACKING SOUND'
"I heard this
cracking sound ... and all of a sudden the tree starts falling toward
the house," he said yesterday. "For a second I thought it was going to
split the house in half."
Luckily, the
tree missed all six windows at the rear of Woods' house, and caused
very little damage, although it did leave a huge mess. "It looks a bit
like a hurricane hit my back yard," Woods said of the debris.
He's still trying to determine whether he can clear the tree from the roof himself or will need to bring in a professional.
According to
Environment Canada spokeswoman Anne-Marie Palfreeman, winds reached
sustained speeds of 50 km/h on Sunday, while the strongest gusts
recorded were close to 70 km.
The winds would have been gusting at closer to the 60 km/h mark during the time when the tree hit Woods' house, she said.
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