Lisa and Lou Garbin’s two-story garage behind their Delmont home was saved from being cut in half Wednesday night when a large tree toppled by a storm crashed through the roof and landed on the upper floor.
“We were saved by a couch,” Lou Garbin said of the tree that came to rest on a piece of soft furniture in the garage at the rear of his East White Oak Drive home.
The Garbins weren’t home around 7 p.m. Wednesday when a microburst slammed into Delmont, causing the tree to slice through the roof and stretch into their neighbor’s backyard.
“It came upon us real quick,” said Delmont Fire Chief Rich Balik, noting that other trees were toppled as well.
One of Garbin’s neighbors, Bob Watkins, said he was in the back of his house when the microburst hit, causing such heavy rain that he never heard the trees fall.
Firefighters spent several hours using chainsaws to cut the tree. They removed a section of the trunk that was lodged in the roof by wrapping a chain around the tree and hooking it to the front of a fire truck, which pulled part of the tree off the roof.
The National Weather Service determined the microburst hit between 7 and 7:15 p.m., said Matthew Kramar, a weather service meteorologist.
The weather service was not aware of any other community that suffered damage from a microburst, Kramar said.
