MORGANTOWN — It was a windy Wednesday when Christie Wolfe was heading home from work.
She takes W.Va. 7 from Morgantown to her home in Masontown.
On that Wednesday, she was driving her 2016 Mazda CX-5 a little slower because the roads were wet and she could tell a storm was about to roll in.
“I didn’t even see the tree limb, it happened so fast,” she said.
That tree limb fell and hit her car, breaking the windshield. She was startled and screamed.
“I’ll tell you what, it sure was scary,” she said.
She pulled off the road, turned her emergency flashers on and called her fiancé to let him know what happened.
“I was thinking, ‘God, I need to move out from here, what if another tree falls on me?’ ” she said.
She told her fiancé she was just going to make the three-mile drive home with her flashers on.
“You know I cried about halfway home. I couldn’t believe it happened,” she said.
She’d recently bought the car and had only made two payments.
She said she had previously discussed the trees on the road with her fiancé, but never imagined she would be the one affected by a falling limb.
“We were just praying that nobody would be around when they came down because they’re going to come down,” she said.
She’s glad her fiancé wasn’t with her, because he would have likely been in the passenger’s seat and hit with broken glass. Wolfe was not injured, but some glass made its way to the driver’s seat.
“I’m just glad it didn’t hit my side and hit me and that nobody else was with me. It could have been a lot worse,” she said.
She said estimated repairs will cost about $5,000. There might be more, but Wolfe knows the lower grill, the hood, the passenger’s side window and the windshield all need to be replaced. Her deductible is $500.
She’s not sure she can get help from anyone. She checked to see if the tree was on property owned by Greer Industries, but believes it was in a state Division of Highways right-of-way.“The sad part is, I know the state road needs help. They need workers, but honestly there’s a lot of people that are unemployed right now that could use jobs,” she said.
“I can understand why they’re short staffed, but honestly this stuff needs taken care of before somebody gets killed,” she said.
In a meeting held June 13, Donny Williams, DOH District 4 Engineer, said tree removal takes funding as well as people and equipment.
“The canopy removal is something we don’t disagree with, but it’s a very costly thing and we don’t have the equipment to do it, for the most part. Now we can remove a tree when it falls down, things like that. But the companies like Asplundh and people like that — we don’t have that,” Williams said.
Calls to the DOH for more information on this particular incident were not returned in time for this report.
“If you look at some of these trees, they’re leaning way out, and now I pay more attention them because you know I’m a little skittish about going up and down the road,” Wolfe said.
