Motorists escape injury after trees fall on vehicles in North Strabane Township
Courtesy of North Strabane Township Fire Department
The driver of this truck walked away with no major injuries after a tree fell on it Wednesday morning on Christy Road in North Strabane Township.
Courtesy of North Strabane Township Fire Department
A tree fell on this truck on Christy Road in North Strabane Township Wednesday.
Courtesy of North Strabane Township Fire Department
Storms that came through North Strabane Township Wednesday brought down this tree.
Wednesday’s storm brought trees crashing down on two vehicles in North Strabane Township, but drivers walked away with no major injuries.
The first call came in about 3:20 p.m. Wednesday on Christy Road, according to North Strabane fire Chief Mark Grimm. A tree landed on the left side of a vehicle. The driver, a male from North Strabane, had minor facial injuries from the broken glass.
“That one was kind of minor. There wasn’t really a lot to it,” Grimm said.
Around 7 p.m. that evening, a large locust tree came down on a pickup truck at the intersection of Linden Road and Munntown Road, trapping a North Strabane man inside.
“We’ve had trees and wires on cars,” Grimm said. “We’ve never seen the severity and the size of the tree come down on a vehicle, and the male was not injured, period.”
Grimm described the driver as calm, and said he did not panic during the 15 minutes it took to extricate him from the vehicle. Getting him out required cutting part of the tree, removing the doors of the truck and pushing up the roof with hydraulic tools.
“It was a pretty extensive entrapment,” Grimm said.
According to Grimm, there were about 15 storm-related calls on Wednesday, and that incident was the last and most severe.
“He was great. He talked to our rescue crews the whole time,” Grimm said. “I asked if he played the lottery. He said no. I told him he should.”