URBAN – Tyler Treacy was driving home during a storm early Thursday afternoon when he received a call from his fiancée about an unexpected meeting.
“My fiancee called and said, ‘There’s a tree in our house,'” she said.
An old tree that Treacy describes as about four stories tall has fallen and blown three holes in the roof of the one-story house on Grant Place in Urbana that he and his fiancée, Jolene Tschida, just bought a month ago — their first home.
As of Friday afternoon, the tree was sticking out of the roof in three places, with a branch in a closet reaching all the way down to the floor, another sticking out of their bedroom ceiling, and a third from their office ceiling.
“It looks like an upside down tree is growing right inside our house,” Treacy said.
They don’t know if the tree was struck by lightning or just snapped by the wind, he said.
On the bright side, the five cats, two dogs, and four people: Treacy, musician and sound engineer at the Canopy Club; Tschida, a nurse at Carle Foundation Hospital; her mother; and her sister-in the house they were all unharmed.
“Everyone is safe, which is great,” Treacy said.
Treacy said their insurance company put them in touch with an out-of-area tree service, which was scheduled to come and remove the tree today.
Much of his neighborhood went without power Friday afternoon, he said.
Because the tree on their roof is tangled with power lines, getting electricity back to their home will have to wait until the tree is removed, he said.
