Wild storm topples trees
Jackson, Sam and Austin Diercks (from left to right) stand with an 80-foot Engelmann spruce that toppled in their Lake Street neighborhood. The tree narrowly missed two homes. (Photo by KEITH KINNAIRD)
SANDPOINT — The windstorm that raked Bonner County on Thursday brought with it some incredibly close calls.
A mother and her two children narrowly escaped injury when part of a spruce tree broke away and toppled onto the parked pickup truck they were in at the Bonner County Administration Building.
Half of the twinned spruce fell diagonally across the Toyota Tundra, with the trunk barely missing the cab and its occupants.
“No injuries,” Commissioner Lewie Rich marveled after the tree fell at around 1 p.m.
Rich said the family’s patriarch was interviewing for a job at the Bonner County Planning Department when the tree toppled.
Several hours later, Paula Marcinko and John Sidwell, were noting the ferocity of the weather outside their home office on Lake Street when a neighbor’s 80-foot Engelmann spruce suddenly appeared in their backyard.
“The tree’s falling — run!” Marcinko recalled her husband saying as she bolted from her seat and moved away from the windows.
The dense spruce tree fell at an angle behind the homes, but its trunk missed both structures.
“It pays to go to church,” the neighbor, Gwen Knowles, said as she surveyed the downed tree.
The tree took out a wooden fence between the two backyards and an ornamental tree in Marcinko and Sidwell’s yard. The treetop fell on a Plymouth Voyager minivan in couple’s driveway.
“Totaled,” said Marcinko.
Bonner County Emergency Management Director Bob Howard said there were scattered reports of downed trees and fouled utility lines around the county.