By Holly Fesperman LeeSalisbury PostSandra Montgomery was inside a storage building next to her house during Wednesday evening’s thunderstorm when she heard a rustling sound.
She quickly got out of the small building because she remembered a tree falling close behind it last year.
“I got out and I looked back and I said ‘Oh my God!’ ” she recalled later.
Montgomery saw that her suspicions were right ó except it was her house that took the brunt of a 60-year-old hickory tree in her backyard.
“I called the insurance people first,” she said.
After that, she quickly got on the phone to call One on One Tree Expert, her neighbor’s tree-removal company.
Montgomery said she’s been living in the 101-year-old home on Lincolnton Road for about four years.
As she walked around the side of her house, she pointed at the downed tree, saying, “There it is in all its glory. It destroyed my deck and the whole half-end of the house.”
As Wayne Allen from the tree removal company surveyed the damage, he told Montgomery, “Well it ain’t good, and you can’t cover it up until you get the tree off.”
Montgomery said the kitchen, dining room and laundry room were under the section of roof where the tree hit.
“Actually it looks fine inside,” she said. “There were things knocked off the wall.”
Some pictures inside the house had been knocked crooked, and several of Montgomery’s ceramic shelf ornaments were broken.
“I was lucky inside,” she said.
She also pointed to a room upstairs that had access to the home’s attic. As she opened the small door, she pointed to a large hole in the roof that was open to the outside.
Montgomery said she was about to get some estimates on having her house painted, but now she might have to put that project off until next year.
“But it seems like one every year ó I’m losing a big tree to weather,” she said.
As Allen came down from Montgomery’s damaged roof he said, “Something don’t smell right.”
He told Montgomery the tree also landed on her power lines, and it would be wise to call Duke Energy.
Montgomery got right on it.
“All I need is a fire on top of the tree,” she said.
nnnContact Holly Lee at 704-797-7683 or hlee@salisburypost.com.