Plymouth woman unscathed after tree falls on house

Joyselyn Forbes is counting her lucky stars that neither she nor her daughter-in-law was injured when a large limb from her neighbour's chennette tree at the back of her house at Bethesda, Plymouth came crashing down onto her home on Monday morning.

Forbes, 68, recounted the incident to Newsday.

“About 2.10am, I heard a loud noise. I got up and went to the front door. I didn’t see anything – I said something fell, but what it is I don’t know.

"I happened to come into the kitchen, and I looked, and I saw a branch, so I pulled a curtain so I could see, and I said to myself, 'Oh, it’s just a chennette branch, a limb from the chennette tree.'”

She said she went back to bed, but kept tossing and turning, as the noise was on her mind.

At 7am, her nephew came calling out to her.

“'Auntie, auntie – you know a tree on your house?'

"I told him I heard the bang but I thought was a little branch.

"He said, 'No, no, no, no, no – come out and look.'

"When I come out and look, I said. 'My God.'”

She said she first noticed damage to the galvanise, the roof and her windows.

“I’m very sad because I just did renovations..., I said, 'Well at least I’m still alive, because it could have been worse.'”

She said the tree was old and she had been pleading for donkeys' years with the owner to trim it but in vain.

“I told them that the tree is pretty old, and I think maybe you guys should cut some of the limbs off or something like that. They said they didn’t have any money, so they never did anything.”

Up to 4pm on Monday, the neighbour was yet to visit.

“Not a soul I haven’t seen. There is a guy who lives there – I called and called, and he’s not there, and the other guy who usually comes, he lives in Speyside. If I get a hold of the one who lives there, then I would let him know to tell the other guy what happened, but ...”

She said officials of both the TT Electricity Commission (TTEC) and the Tobago Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) along with CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) visited the house.

“TEMA said to come in and they would make a report and I would take it from there to Self Help (Commission), where I can get some help to have the house repaired.”

CERT technicians were able to remove the tree and TTEC linesmen were able to disconnect and reconnect electricity services to the home.