'Pretty intense’: Tree falls on East Wareham house, car during storm
The tree fell onto Susan Mastria's Woodside Avenue home just before 3 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26. Photos by Christian Uva
A view of the tree from the side, resting on the porch and the roof.
The tree downed the fence dividing her and her neighbor's yards.
Most of the tree fell onto her driveway, splitting the house and the garage.
From inside the house, Mastria could see her car covered in branches.
A closer look at the car and the shattered back windshield.
The tree as seen from Jefferson Shores Road. The inside appears to be dark and rotting.
An edge of the garage roof was sliced open, but much of the garage remained unharmed.
The tree fell onto Susan Mastria's Woodside Avenue home just before 3 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26. Photos by Christian Uva
A view of the tree from the side, resting on the porch and the roof.
The tree downed the fence dividing her and her neighbor's yards.
Most of the tree fell onto her driveway, splitting the house and the garage.
From inside the house, Mastria could see her car covered in branches.
A closer look at the car and the shattered back windshield.
The tree as seen from Jefferson Shores Road. The inside appears to be dark and rotting.
An edge of the garage roof was sliced open, but much of the garage remained unharmed.
A tree fell and Susan Mastria was around to hear it.
“It was just like a boom,” she said.
That boom came from a large tree splitting apart and landing on her house, garage and car.
The tree fell just before 3 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26, she said. She was asleep on the second floor of her house on Woodside Avenue when the branches came down.
Most of the tree narrowly avoided hitting Mastria’s house. While some branches landed on the back of the roof of her house, damaging the gutter and shingles, most of the tree came down on her car. She said it was totaled. The back windshield had shattered.
A corner of the garage roof had been gashed during the fall as well.
But Mastria thought it could have been worse. “It’s almost miraculous” that it fell between the house and the garage, she said.
This happened on her late brother’s birthday. She said she felt like he was watching over her when the tree missed the house.
She felt lucky that her house missed the brunt of it.
Windows showed the leaves of the branches that fell directly onto the porch Mastria had installed under a year ago. “It’s creepy,” she said as she pulled the curtains back to reveal the tree on her rear lawn.
Mastria said she was glad she could pull the blinds over the window to keep her from looking at the damage too much.
A Wareham building inspector and the Onset Fire Department told her on Sept. 26 that the house was safe to stay in.
But for the foreseeable future, she will be sleeping on her first-floor couch.
“I’m not sleeping upstairs,” she said.
Mastria said she is afraid the continuing rain would make the leaves and branches heavy, which could drag them down and cause more damage.
The tree that fell on her property was planted in her Jefferson Shores Road neighbor’s lawn. Mastria said she had seen cracking between the two conjoined trunks over the summer.
From the street, the inside of the downed tree appeared to be rotting.
The neighbor declined to comment.
