PLEASANTON, Calif. (KGO) – In the East Bay, teams are busy restoring areas damaged by Tuesday’s violent storm.
It was only seconds before the facade of the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Pleasanton was crushed by a falling tree.
“The building[shook]a little bit, the other secretary was there with me and I was like, ‘What’s going on? We have to get out of here!’” explains Carol Bryson, who works at the church.
She was upstairs, next to the part of the church that had collapsed.
When they came out to inspect the damage, their reaction was, “Wow! When you look at it – just wow!”
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Brianna Armario directed the video of the falling tree. She says she just went out to capture video of the strong winds, not expecting the tree to fall.
“After capturing the video, I realized I had to run across the street and make sure everyone was okay, especially my neighbors there,” says Armario.
That neighbor was Jeff Meier. Part of the tree fell on his house and damaged parts of the roof. He says he’s grateful he wasn’t home and nobody was hurt.
“I think the real warning to everyone is big trees are beautiful, you just have to be careful. You have to take good care of them,” says Meier.
The strength of the wind was unlike anything many longtime residents and first responders have ever experienced.
“I’ve never heard the wind like that,” said longtime resident Herb Ritter. “Some of the neighbors were filming trees and were even able to film some trees falling.”
A former member of the City Planning and Parks Commission, Ritter has deep roots in Pleasanton.
He stopped to watch the aftermath of the tree crashing into the Lighthouse Baptist Church.
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He said the lesson learned is to look up, especially as tall trees continue to line many streets in Pleasanton.
“I look up at all the branches and I think we just need to prune the trees better. Tree cutters say it takes the sail out of the tree and that’s one way to prevent them from falling over if they do a lot of leaves and the weight in them. But it is an expensive task.”
Livermore-Pleasanton Fire was deluged by the sheer volume of calls received during the storm. Battalion chief Craig Berchtold estimates the department had 100 calls in a three-hour window, with chiefs eventually monitoring lines.
“We just had call after call, after call, after call. We had outstanding calls that we couldn’t reach,” Berchtold said. “Just cables, trees, floods, blackouts. So a multitude of calls throughout the day, to a point where our bosses just took over and basically sorted the calls for us because we couldn’t handle all the calls.”
The department itself was affected by the storm, with three of its stations running on generators well into the morning. Still, their reaction doesn’t stop, even after the storm’s aftermath — hundreds of trees are estimated to have fallen between the two cities.
“We basically gave all of our engine manufacturers more chains for the saws, more fuel, more oil,” Berchtold said. “That way, whatever response we need, we can respond with the City of Pleasanton or Livermore to cut down trees.”
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