Newlyweds' home hammered by tree
<p>SHAWN GUST/Press Reid Corta, job foreman for Grace Tree Service, secures a cable to a tree Tuesday while preparing to remove the trunk from a house. The 120-foot dual trunk Ponderosa pine tree split during Monday afternoon's wind storm causing major damage to the Coeur d'Alene home.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - The yellow house on Davidson Avenue looked like the idyllic home for a couple ready to start their married life together, right down to the white picket fence.
Then the wind came.
Monday's gusts of nearly 50 mph brought down a towering pine tree from the next door neighbor's yard, sending it crashing through the roof of the yellow house and causing what appears to be major damage.
"There are big limbs right through the kitchen, living room and bedroom," said Shawn Bennett, operations manager for Grace Tree Service.
The 120-foot tree length, half of a double-trunk Ponderosa pine, fell completely across the yellow house's roof, caving it in. The upper tree portions landed on the house's detached garage and into another neighbor's yard where the tree smashed down on a shed.
There were no injuries, and no one was living in the yellow house when the tree fell.
Bennett's company had heard that soon-to-be newlyweds were planning to move in.
"That isn't going to happen anytime soon," he said.
The total cost to repair the damage to the yellow house has yet to be estimated. Bennett said walls will need to be replaced inside the home.
Kathy Wilson, the neighbor from whose yard the tree fell, said she felt bad for the other homeowners.
The damage to the shed is estimated to be $1,500.
"I never imagined anything would happen to that tree. I'm going to miss it," Wilson said.
In Wilson's front yard, a blanket of green vines crept up and around the pine from its base.
It has been several years since wind gusts have been strong enough to blow down trees.
"There will be a rash of people taking down their trees now," said Bennett, a certified arborist and tree risk assessor.
That might not always be necessary, he said.
"All trees have risk of failure in the wind," Bennett said. "A lot of them, we can thin them out, so the wind passes through them, and doesn't make them sail like a kite."