More photos inside
September 5, 2008
by Christine Yeres
On Tuesday afternoon around 3:00 p.m., police and ambulance were called by a passing motorist to Bedford Road just south of the intersection with Roaring Brook Road.
There, on the shoulder of the northbound lane, a Toyota Prius traveling north had come to a stop with a 40-foot leaf-covered tree trunk 20 inches in diameter lying lengthwise across its roof, its base pointed forward, its top trailing behind. Police said the tree had jumped onto the car 200 yards south of the car’s final resting place.
It occurred to one astounded passerby that if the tree were the healthy, living specimen it seemed, “then there’s a lot more to worry about having fall on you around these roadways.” But the tree and its trunk, were, in fact, dead. Its disguise of leaves the whole length of the tree belonged to a robust poison ivy vine two inches in diameter at its base, which had left its moorings along with the tree.
The driver of the car, a woman from Pleasantville, suffered abrasions and seemed more worried for her canine passenger, a small Dachshund in a tiny white baby diaper that seemed more disoriented than she did, according to a passing motorist. Traffic was passing at a trickle, directed by police who had called to notify the New York State Department of Transportation of the mishap since Bedford Road, a.k.a. Route 117, is a state highway, New Castle’s department of public works and a towing service.
Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps crew members put a collar on the patient to immobilize her neck and placed her in the ambulance. One crew member snapped a photo of the tree-bearing car to show hospital personnel the “mechanism of injury,” and the patient was taken to Northern Westchester Hospital, two miles straight north. One ambulance crew member remained behind with the dog, waiting for Animal Control to arrive and transport the pet to a vet.
A reader of NewCastleNOW.org who was dropping her son at the high school that afternoon wrote the next day, “At 2:55 p.m. yesterday I went by an incredible accident at the light by Greeley and 117. A huge tree had fallen and hit a car from the hood straight through to the back of the car and squashed it down to the window sills.” In fact, the tree landed slightly more toward the passenger side of the roof – which had been pounded lower—than the driver side. The slightly off-centered hit is what spared the driver greater injury.
A look back at the place from which the tree seemed to have hitched a ride showed wood and leaf debris, three pieces of a Prius mirror assembly and remaining trees lodged against one another at odd angles, but there was no evident stump or limb from which the attacker tree had leapt.
Copyright 2008 NewCastleNOW.org