When the boughs break

Before the trees fell, Peter Brooks took the dogs around the backyard.

Then he found a comfortable spot on the couch.

Within minutes, there came a roar, “like a train or something.”

And down came three 80-foot-tall white pines.

“It was like someone bombed our house,” said Lee Ann Brooks, whose South Poplar Avenue home was maimed during a wind storm Wednesday. “I thought that was the weirdest sound.”

Never in 10 years has the Brooks family encountered such a mighty gust, one that landed the home a “catastrophe” label from their insurance company. Damage has not yet been estimated. Neighboring homes escaped damage and none reported other trees smacked by the gust.

“It’s just a freaky thing,” Brooks said. “We’re very fortunate no one was hurt. ... My husband had the dogs out, literally, five minutes before.”

Not hurt, but startled. Of the trees that split, one came to rest atop the second-floor roof of the home and two clipped a lower back room, spreading branches and pines through the length of the backyard. The whole house shook, spilling things from dressers.

“All that can be fixed,” Brooks said.

Cleanup started Friday with a crew from Big “O” Tree and Lawn scampering up the busted tree trunks and going to work with saws and a chipper.

“That was a heck of a gust of wind,” said a chain saw-toting John Jeffers.

Looking from the backyard through where the pines once stood, Jeffers could see tree tops miles into the distance.

“There was nothing to stop that southwest wind,” he said.

“Even the top of my light post,” Brooks said, “was down the street.”