One family in Gainesville is dealing with a severely damaged house Friday morning following the passage of then-Hurricane Helene . But they’re very grateful: the 70-foot tree that smashed through their roof missed their four-month-old daughter by about five feet.
Andrew Carlson and Betsy Riley of Gainesville were in bed when the tree crashed through the home in the 800 block of SW 99th Street, in the Willow Bend development.
“We were laying in bed and I was hit by a broken rafter,” Carlson said. “We lost power at 9:30 and I went to bed at that time, and within about a half an hour, we had a crash outside, and this tree came down and hit the master bedroom.
“It ripped a hole in the ceiling and part of the wall. It took out a two-by-four that hit me on the head, and I needed five staples for that,” he said. But thankfully, none of the debris hit their infant child, Bailey Carlson-Riley.
“She was sleeping about 6 feet from me in the bassinet at the foot of the bed,” Carlson said. Their 2-year-old child was also unharmed, he said.