Pottsville homeowner says everything shook when house was hit by tree
POTTSVILLE — Richard Bauder didn’t know what to expect when he went upstairs from his basement after hearing crashing and clashing at his home at 18 Timber Road on Thursday morning.
He discovered quite a scene.
The front windows and door were blocked by a fallen tree, and it was dark outside as a storm raged. The wall to his attached garage had buckled in toward the house.
“Everything in the house just shook,” he said Friday, surveying the damage outside his home in the Forest Hills section of the city.
While there was a report of a funnel cloud in the area, the National Weather Service said Friday that the damage appeared to be from straight-line winds.
Bauder, his wife, Beth, and her parents, Margaret and William Fish, moved into the home in November, along with Kolby, a dachshund.
“They were terrified,” Richard Bauder said about his in-laws, who were awakened by the noise and items falling off the walls.
They would discover that an oak tree of about 60 to 70 feet tall from a neighboring property had fallen onto their garage roof while a limb estimated at 30 to 40 feet long from a tree in front of their house had fallen onto the roof, puncturing it in multiple locations.
To make matters worse, the oak tree landed on Bauder’s 2023 Hyundai Tucson, totaling it.
“There’s quite a bit of damage,” he said soon before an insurance adjuster arrived.
After a night at a hotel Thursday, the couples moved back in Friday. Temporary repairs were made to the roof of the house, but it will need to be replaced.
The garage, meanwhile, will have to be replace.
The large tree from which the limb broke off and another of similar size in front of the home will be taken down next week.
The family was helped by the Pennsylvania Rivers Chapter of the American Red Cross.
A nearby home was also damaged when shingles blew off and a tree hit a garage. Pottsville Fire Chief James E. Misstishin Sr. said wires and trees were down throughout the city.
The first call for storm-related damage came at 7:49 a.m. for wires down on Howard Avenue. The Timber Road call came after that, as did one of Crestview Drive, not far from Timber Road, Misstishin said.
NWS meteorologist David Martin at the State College office said the determination of straight-line winds was made by looking at pictures from the scene and radar signature of the storm.
“Currently the evidence points to straight-line winds and there is no investigation planned at this point,” he said Friday. “We didn’t see evidence of any rotation there.”
The damage suggests winds of at least 60 mph, he said.
NWS had issued a severe weather statement at 7:09 a.m. Thursday, reporting that a strong thunderstorm would affect the area though 8:15 a.m. with wind gusts of 50 mph possible along with hail of half-inch diameter.
