Jan. 22 update: Most outages restored, but windstorm leaves wake of fallen trees
A Surrey family is out of their townhome after a tree toppled onto it Sunday morning.
"I woke up at about 7:30 and I heard a big, big bang. I had a feeling that something happened...that it fell on the house," said Stefania Ulici, who lives in the unit with her husband and children.
"It sounded like a bomb. It sounded like the whole building...it sounded like an earthquake actually," added her husband, Corey Belciug.
Ulici says the tree was swaying all night and she was nervous it would fall before she went to bed.
Residents think city repair work may have contributed to the tree falling.
Within the last two weeks, city crews repairing a water main dug a trench from the centre of 102 Avenue onto the strata property.
In the process, several large roots of the tree were severed and residents say that is one of the reasons the tree, which had stood for 40 years, came crashing down.
"We have a whole family that was put in danger because of that," said strata council member Tony Fernando. "Some of the kids are still shaking because they got up from sleeping and wonder what's going on."
Fernando said neighbours noticed water pooling around the tree about an hour before it fell.
City staff arrived Saturday morning to shut off the water main to the 118 unit complex.
Fernando said staff told him since the tree and broken water main are on strata property, the city will not contribute to cleanup or repairs.
CTV News has reached out the City of Surrey and communications staff say they are looking into the issue.
In the meantime, Ulici and her family are trying to figure out where they will go until this gets sorted out, even as they're still in shock about what happened.
"I was shaking, I was crying. When I first came out, I couldn't even stare at the trees. I thought they were going to come down, all of them...on me," she said. "I was just shaking. I'm traumatized."
