Massive tree splits Beaufort house leaving owner homeless
Drifting off to sleep at 1 a.m. Friday, Raymond Paige heard what he thought to be the familiar crackling of thunder and lightning during a late-night rainstorm.
But when Paige failed to hear the subsequent boom of thunder, he immediately realized the source was much closer to home -- the huge laurel oak tree in his front yard was finally collapsing.
Believed to be almost 150 years old, the tree crashed down on his home on Southside Boulevard in Beaufort. The trunk crushed the living room, sending wooden beams through Sheetrock and collapsing the drywall ceiling. Two huge limbs cut through the roof and pierced the far wall, cutting the living room nearly in half.
"It was certainly scary," Paige said. "I just thought to myself, 'Wow, I'm glad I made it out.'"
Immediately after realizing the crackling sound was coming from inside his home, Paige dropped to the floor, crawling out of his bedroom over broken bits of Sheetrock in the pitch dark to reach the front door. When the door wouldn't budge -- jammed shut by the weight of the tree, which had landed on the front porch -- Paige crawled to the back door and then tripped over broken branches that had fallen onto his deck.
The tree fell almost diagonally onto Paige's home, sparing his bedroom from any severe damage and him from any injury. As the tree fell, it clipped branches of a century-old pecan tree about 10 feet behind the home, coming to rest on one of the pecan tree's limbs. The pecan tree limited the tree trunk's impact with the home, preventing even more catastrophic damage, Paige's brother Larry said.
The laurel oak was the second tree to collapse in Paige's yard in less than two weeks. A little over a week before, another laurel oak right next to the tree that collapsed early Friday fell away from the house, crushing part of Paige's chainlink fence and landing across Southside Boulevard.
City of Beaufort public works employees cut the tree that fell onto the road back to the property line, leaving a large piece of the trunk in Paige's front yard. A city arborist who came out to inspect the trees called the laurel oak left standing "a ticking time bomb," Raymond Paige said Tuesday.
"The tree was no match for the storm," Larry Paige said.
Raymond Paige, a U.S. Army veteran and a retired civilian employee of Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, said he couldn't afford to remove the tree before its fall.
City employees examining the damage Tuesday said they hoped to find a tree-trimming company that would volunteer its services to cut up the trunk.
Larry Paige said he and two others spent the weekend cutting away smaller limbs with saws and chainsaws until the blades went dull, but the massive trunk still resting on the home was too thick for their equipment. On Tuesday, the driveway of the home was lined with brush and wood piles from the limbs they had cut.
Since the tree came crashing into Raymond Paige's home, he has stayed in a hotel with American Red Cross assistance, but his final day in the hotel was to be Tuesday night.
If the tree is removed from the home, Paige and his brother both said, the areas damaged by the tree could be rebuilt. The 63-year-old home's load-bearing structure survived largely intact, but Paige said he'll need help to rebuild it.
A lung cancer survivor, Paige said the disability payments he collects are his only income. He had no homeowner's insurance, so any repairs will have to be paid out-of-pocket. He and his Red Cross caseworker have been searching for programs that help veterans, to assist him in the recovery.
"I'm 60 years old, and for the first time in my life, I'm homeless," he said. "I'm in dire straits. I could pop up a tent in the yard. Nothing can fall on me now."
Follow reporter Matt McNab at twitter.com/IPBG_Matt.
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This story was originally published July 7, 2015 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Massive tree splits Beaufort house leaving owner homeless."