In late June, a 30 foot tree branch came crashing into our family room missing my wife by about 5 feet. The branch fell from about 70-80 feet and managed to drop straight down like a spear puncturing the roof and then settling back with about 20 feet outside and 10 feet inside. As it leaned back from the weight on the outside, it grabbed a curtain. It looked like a crazy curtain rod. Several people commented that it looked like modern art.
All things considered, we were lucky. It happened on a weekday morning after the weather had cleared. Our carpenter and tree guy responded the same day. Our insurance company, AMICA, was very responsive. All parties did a great job from start to finish. Ironically, we recently had a branch removed from the tree because we were worried about it. It appears we removed the wrong branch!
All is well now, but we considered it a warning and had the tree taken down. The stump is about 4 feet x 5 feet. I counted the rings and there are more than 100. Does that really represent the age of a tree? I hated to see that beautiful old tree go, but we couldn’t let it happen again and risk someone being hurt.
Check out my flickr site for photos of the damage, repair and tree removal.
