Waterbury Sustains Damage From Monday's Storm

Alan Schneider, like so many of his neighbors, ran outside when he heard the century-old maple next door come crashing to the ground Monday afternoon.

“I heard the wind. It was a tremendous wind gust and I heard like a crunching noise and then a major explosion,” Schneider said.

Schneider, who was in the upstairs office when the storm rolled through, is lucky the tree fell over the street and not into his Waterbury house.

“There was a flash when our lights went out and then this one second boom that shook the house,” his next-door neighbor Christopher Morin said.

"A really loud cracking noise. It sounded like ripping Velcro," added Jennifer Morin.

The neighbors saw a mangled mess of wires hanging over Lexington Avenue and Clinton Street. Below, a tree, with branches that neighbors described as being as large as the tree’s trunk, sat on top of Schneider’s Suburban.

"The roof is crushed and some of the branches went into the tires. It’s major damage," he said.

The force of the tree also knocked a utility pole over onto Ashley Cogswell’s car.

"I literally just heard a crackling sound and then like boom, boom, boom," said Cogswell.

As day turned to night, crews worked in the pitch black to get power restored and the roads reopened. The winds that had brought the tree down were gone, as was the rain. Residents said they were thankful that the power outage occurred on a night that was neither hot nor cold. Although, the evening was exceptionally humid. The sounds of chainsaws could be heard through the thick night air.

“I’m glad nobody got hurt. The cars were unoccupied,” said Morin. “I’m more concerned about the fact that it ripped the wires off of our house.”

Neighbors said the tree was tagged to be trimmed, but Mother Nature got to it first. Eversource said 87 customers were affected by the outage. By nine p.m., only 18 remained in the dark.

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