Severe Storm Sent Towering Pines Crashing Into Newtown Borough Homes

NEWTOWN BOROUGH, PA — Two homeowners on Washington Avenue are assessing the damage after Saturday’s severe thunderstorm sent two large pine trees crashing into their homes.

Paula Craig was standing at a glass storm door looking out at the storm when one of the trees came crashing down against the house and the door where she was standing.

“I was watching the storm with my dog at the door and I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow. This is like really a bad storm.' The next thing I know the tree was crashing at us.”

The wind snapped this towering pine sending it crashing into the home of Mark and Paula Craig on Washington Avenue. (photo by Jeff Werner)

The wind snapped the tree at its trunk. (photo by Jeff Werner)

The tree missed their family room, striking the corner of the home, breaking several storm windows and a bathroom window on the second floor and taking a corner off of the roof line as it toppled in the wind.

Their neighbors, Larry and Laurie Luff, headed to their basement when they heard the tornado warning and saw on the news that rotation had been indicated in a storm moving in the direction of Newtown from Wrightstown.

A towering pine crashed into their third floor TV room, it’s limbs piercing the walls and extending into the room. The uprooted tree also destroyed part of their driveway as it fell.

“We went to the basement when we heard the warnings,” he said. “We heard the crash of both trees. One sounded like a snap. The other when it it hit the roof there was a real bang. They both made us jump. That’s the first time in the 25 years that we have lived here that I had to go to the basement.”

The wind snapped this tree on Chancellor Street sending into the power lines. (photo by Jeff Werner)

Next to the Craig home in the first block of Chancellor Street adjacent to the Newtown Presbyterian Church, branches from a third fallen tree, snapped off at its trunk, hung in a tangled mess of power lines waiting for power crews to arrive.

The worst of the storm appeared to be concentrated in three areas - the parking lot of the ACME market where the wind literally relocated one of the shopping cart corrals and caused tree damage; the Village of Newtown where it took out a portion of a decorated roof line, damaged vehicles and uprooted trees near Harvest; and the toppled trees just off Washington Avenue and on Chancellor Street.

Paula Craig checks out the damage. (photo by Jeff Werner)