Homeowners Grateful For Support After Tree Hit House
Brian Reck and his partner, Suzanne Allan, were at the Nelson Gallery in Lexington Friday evening when a powerful storm barreled through town.
After the storm, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing when they rounded the corner towards their home on West McDowell Street.
“There were branches everywhere,” Reck said. “It was a totally different world as soon as you turned onto the street.”
Reck, who was driving, slowed down to talk to some people walking by to check out the damage.
“They were just like, ‘Oh, you should see that house.’ I was like, ‘Which one?’ And they’re like, ‘The brick house.’ So that’s how I learned about it. Word of mouth,” Reck said.
Reck pulled up to his house, where he saw that a giant tree had crashed all the way through their large, stand-up attic.
“It had to have been 100-mph winds,” he said.
Reck works in Washington, D.C., and he and Allan only live in town part-time, but Allan said neighbors immediately rallied together to put them up for the night, along with a friend who was visiting and their two cats.
“People that we barely have seen have opened up their house to us,” Allan said. “It’s been amazing. We’ve had so many offers to stay. We have incredible neighbors.”
Reck and Allan, who have had the home for four years, have arranged to stay in another friend’s house for the next few weeks while their insurance company assesses the damage.
On Saturday afternoon, they gathered crucial belongings as a crane towered over their home, painstakingly removing large branches. Reck said they plan to fix the roof as soon as possible.
Both Allan and Reck said they are just glad no one was hurt and that the community has been so supportive.
“I mean, sometimes in bad situations, you find good things,” Reck said. “And I guess maybe this is one of those good things.”
Reck and Allan’s home was one of at least three damaged during the storm, according to Lexington Fire Chief Ty Dickerson. Another home just around the corner on Catalpa Place had a tree fall on it and strong winds ripped a metal roof off a home on Borden Road, Dickerson said.
Thankfully, no one was injured in the storms.
LISA SOLTIS posted this photo on The News-Gazette’s Facebook page of a car they lost at the corner of Main and Jordan streets. The last time the family lost a car, she said, was in the Flood of ’85 in Botetourt’s Tinker Creek.
TREE CREWS work to remove a large, splintered limb that fell through the roof of a home on West McDowell Street. The homeowners were not there at the time. (Allie Goolrick photo)
