Sleeping Occupant Receives Rude Awakening When Tree Fall Causes Mobile Home to Collapse
On Saturday morning around 9:00 a.m., Crystal Cazella of Ormond Beach, Florida, was sleeping in her family’s mobile home when she heard a terrible noise.
A huge, rotting tree next to the home fell, crushing Cazella’s room and trapping her.
“When it fell, like I said I just, I, I didn’t know, you know, if I’m going to make it out,” Cazella told WOFL-TV. “I already heard it coming. And I was just like well, better just lay here and take it.”
Cazella’s mom, Michelle Warn, was in the living room at the time of the accident and was not injured, but Warn suffers from other health issues and could not get to her daughter, despite hearing her cries for help — a terrible situation for any mother to endure.
“I kept hearing her scream ‘mom’ and I couldn’t do anything,” she said.
Thankfully, first responders were soon on the scene, working to free Cazella. It took around an hour, according to a post that she later wrote.
“Unfortunately, I will be off social media for a while,” Cazella shared on Facebook. “I nearly lost my life when this tree fell on top of me and everything caved in … I’m frightened and shaken up. Few small scratches and maybe bruises but I’m ok.
“Took about an hour for the firefighters to pull me out. I was stuck in a small dark area, I couldn’t breathe. Thank god for my neighbors and everyone hearing me scream out for help. Had they not heard me, I would not be here posting right now.
According to the same post, the tree was supposed to have been removed weeks ago, and so Cazella and Warn are looking to see if they can take any legal action and are in need of funds to rebuild what was destroyed.
The mother and daughter are currently staying in a hotel while they figure out their next steps. A GoFundMe has been started, stating that the owner is “disabled and uninsured” and “anything helps.”
Despite the terrible scare and the immense property damage, Cazella is grateful to be alive and unharmed.
“I, I just said, ‘I – I really cannot thank you guys enough because if you guys did not show up, I mean, nobody could get to me,'” she recalled telling her rescuers. “[I]t’s truly a, a miracle that I’m sitting here talking right now.
“I just feel like I shouldn’t even be alive, like standing, because of the way that it fell. I was crushed into like a little teepee shape.”
Cazella’s brother died two years ago, and she and her mother are convinced he was watching out for them.
“I’m not exactly religious, but I really believe that there’s no other explanation,” Warn explained. “You saw the trailer. How can somebody just walk out of that without a scratch?”
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