The scale of the American Elm that fell Nov. 19 onto a home on Snohomish's Avenue B, as seen Thursday, Nov. 21.
Photo by Michael Whitney.
SNOHOMISH — A thick American Elm maybe five stories high uprooted and crashed down onto one of the historic homes along Avenue B around midnight during last Tuesday’s heavy windstorm.
Post-storm, while crews on a boom lift cut the mighty limbs into segments and colleagues lowered them down with a cable, drive-by onlookers couldn’t help but pull their phones out to snap photos.
Steve and Anne Knights’ home was cordoned off for the clean up. Their nearby neighbors have banded together to give them food and a place to sleep. The mayor came to visit with kind words.
During the storm, they heard numerous branches hitting the house, but then, a large “thud,” Anne Knight said.
The winds came from the east. When it fell, one large section landed between two houses, and the rest cradled itself into the roof.
Fire, police and county Department of Emergency Management crews rushed over. A crew needed to check that the natural gas lines weren’t ruptured.
Steve and Anne Knight were lucky the elm’s mass hit where the upstairs bathroom is. They were in the bedroom one room over.
This tree might well date 125 years or more. The Knights’ house was built in 1892 as part of the third addition to Snohomish.
Steve’s seen pictures with the elm from 1909 when it was a wee 20 to 25 feet tall by his eye. The species can grow to 60 to 80 feet at maturity, many sources say. The head of the tree removal service on the job estimated the trunk was 48 inches at the base.
Other American Elms are along Avenue B. The elm in front of Marija and Nick Mayo’s house next door is on the city’s historic tree tour.
Steve was been concerned about his elm getting into the power lines, but it wasn’t seen as vulnerable.
They had three separate arborists tell them the tree’s solid and would not fall, Anne Knight said.
But in what her husband called “the storm of the century,” oh, it did.
It’s thought that the elm fell toward a cedar in the yard and then fell toward the house. The cedar had limbs knocked down.
The uprooting caused a big patch of grass and dirt to get upturned with it.
When he deals with a tree cleanup, ”they’re not normally this big,” said Tylor Zimmerman, the owner of Taylors Snohomish Tree Service whose crew worked the job late into the first night.
The Mayos’ historic elm one house over measured 54 inches in diameter by the Tribune’s measurement.
It’s been heart-warming how neighbors have helped, Nick Mayo said.
“We have good neighbors and good friends,” Anne Knight said.
Steve Knight said their insurance agent Bill Holt is “taking good care of us.”
Crews work with a chainsaw to cut limbs from the tree that fell on the house on Avenue B, as seen Nov. 21 from an elevated position from the house next door.
