Falling Tree Kills Backcountry Woman on Way to Dinner

[ARTICLE 1]

This article reflects my uncle (Sgt. Mike O'Connor)'s account of nearly losing his life as well.


Greenwich Time- A 61-year-old woman was killed after a tree struck her on the head as she and her husband walked in their northeast Greenwich neighborhood during the storm Saturday night.

Police did not release the woman's name pending notification of additional family members. Her husband, who was slightly injured, was treated and released from Greenwich Hospital, and could not be reached by telephone Sunday.

The woman and her husband lived on Boulder Brook Road, and were believed to be walking to a neighbor's home for dinner, police said.

Neighbor Gary Silberberg said he was outside checking on damage when he was approached by the woman's husband, asking him to help search for his wife.

"He was upset, he was agitated," Silberberg said. Darkness and extensive tree damage made the search difficult, Silberberg said.

"It was just awful there were so many trees down," he said.

Silberberg returned to his home to find a flashlight. When he returned a few minutes later the woman had been found lying on the road close to a tree.

"She was lying face down and we turned her over and I couldn't get a pulse and she had a gray pallor on her face," said Silberberg, 65, who had been a medic in the Army about 40 years ago.

A neighbor found a tarpaulin and Silberberg and other neighbors carried her to a nearby home where a doctor lived.

The doctor looked at her but there was nothing he could do, Silberberg said.

Police believed one white pine tree knocked two others down, and that one of the those trees fell on the woman's head.

"We think she died instantly," said Chief David Ridberg.

It took almost two hours for police and paramedics to arrive because of the storm damage that blocked roads leading to the scene, said Sgt. Michael O'Connor.

At one point he feared for his life on Stanwich Road.

"We were outside trying to move a tree when we heard a loud crack -- the gust of wind must have been 70 miles per hour easily -- and we jumped back into the truck," he said. "The tree just stopped above the hood, it was the (telephone) wires that stopped it. If I had moved that truck about four feet (before the tree came down) I think it would have crushed the truck."

The tree's trunk, which O'Connor estimated to be about three feet in diameter, stopped just inches above the hood of the police department pickup he was in with two other officers and two paramedics.

"It was right in the windshield, right in our faces," he said. "There were some expletives said and I said let's get out of here."

They parked the vehicle in a driveway and waited for a tree crew to cut the tree to let them through. But another tree was in their way preventing them from responding to Boulder Brook Road.

They got out and walked but in the meantime two detectives had reached the scene, said O'Connor. Instead they responded to other calls including one where a family had been trapped in a car for hours because trees had come down on either side of the car.

"It was like something out of a movie," O'Connor said about the damage wrought by the storm and the danger they were in. "I was scared. I have been a police officer for almost 26 years and I was a volunteer firefighter before that. This was the worst I have ever seen it. I do consider myself lucky."

It wasn't until about 11 p.m. that the woman and her husband were brought to the hospital, police said.

The woman's body will be taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Monday. Police did not know if an autopsy will be performed Monday.