Family Displaced After Tree Falls Onto House In Morris County

MORRIS COUNTY, NJ — During Monday night's thunderstorm, which caused several counties to issue tornado warnings, a tree fell in a Morris County neighborhood, crashing into a home and damaging power lines.

According to Deb Evans, the Victory Gardens Borough Clerk, yesterday's storm may not have been the reason for the power outage or the downed tree.

Evans stated that the borough did not receive any rain until later in the evening, but the power lines were down due to a tree falling on a house and the branches bringing the power lines down.

"We aren't sure exactly what happened. All of the emergency personnel were up there," Evans said.

Despite the fact that the house was occupied at the time of the incident, no injuries were reported on the scene, Bobby Sperry, the Deputy Fire Chief at the Town of Dover Fire Department, told Patch.

"The house did sustain significant damage to the roof and to some of the inside of the building. It's definitely something where they're going to be displaced for a little while, while insurance gets everything straightened out," Sperry said.

One of the bedrooms was primarily damaged by the tree, and Sperry stated that if the fall had occurred during the night while the family was sleeping, whoever was in that room would have been hit by the tree.

Despite the storm warnings, Sperry agreed that the weather at the time of the collapse was not very aggressive, adding to the confusion as to what brought the tree down.

"They didn't tell me it at the time, but they said that the tree got struck by lightning a month ago. Nobody wanted to tell me that one, but then when I was watching news clips last night, that's when I found that out. Other than that though, I mean it actually looked like a healthy tree," Sperry said. "It wasn't like it was all rotted out or, or beat up. I don't know. There was this little gust that came through and it was already weakened from getting struck by lightning, and that was all it needed."