A Scots woman is terrified a massive tree blown over in Storm Eowyn and is still leaning against her house could crash into it at any moment. Chiara Maccagnana-Regan, 29, lives next to the huge fir tree which towers over her property.
She says she heard scraping and crashing during storm before police warned her she may need to evacuate. The tree had been blown over knocking tiles from her roof and ripping up parts of the pavement.
It is now still leaning against the side of her home in Inverkeithing, Fife, with the potential to topple over. She says she’s made repeated attempts to get the council to help with no luck.
“It was the night of the storm – everyone was told to stay in the house,” she said. “I had no idea about it, but I kept hearing a lot of smashing. It turned out to be a good handful of the tiles on the roof getting knocked off.
“Luckily, one of the neighbours had alerted the police about it, so at 6 o’clock that night, the police knocked on the door. They said the roots had come up and the tree was scraping against the roof of my house.
“They said not to leave the house in case any of the tiles fell on me, and also that we’d need to evacuate if the tree does fall. After the police came, I was quite panicked.
“They told me to not go in the bedroom, so I ended up camping out in my living room for a couple of nights. We believe it was only because it was so close to the building that it ended up leaning against it rather than crashing into it completely and causing more damage.”
Chiara says after multiple attempts by her and neighbours to get Fife Council to take action, nothing has been done. She worries that the tree could fall during the next strong winds.
“On the Saturday after the storm, I phoned the council, and I was on hold for two hours,” said Chiara. “They would have been quite busy, so I understood. I eventually got through and they said they would deal with it that weekend – there were a lot of trees on roads, so that made sense.
“They never showed up that weekend. I spoke to a good few of my neighbours, who said they’ve either called in or gone online to alert them about the tree, and it sounds like everyone’s getting the same answer – they’ll get to it when they get to it. It’s been really frustrating.
“We were very understanding for the first week, that it wasn’t going to happen that weekend because they had other priorities. But at this point, it’s getting ridiculous.”
Chiara says she worries about the harm that could be done to her and her neighbours’ homes if the tree does fall – and says the movement of the tree is still causing damage to her roof.
“Any night that’s even a little bit windy, I hear scraping of the tree pushing onto the house and causing more damage,” she said. “I’ve spoken to my home insurance people, and I can’t get anything fixed until this tree is removed – because we can’t even see what the damage is.
“The longer it’s there, I don’t know what extra damage is being done. If they don’t take action and the tree falls, it will basically take out the front of my house. It’s not just me, I’ve got a downstairs neighbour as well, and their property would be damaged too.
“The tree is massive, and a lot of neighbours would be in trouble if it happened.”
Fife Council confirmed “in the interest of public safety it will intervene and remove this privately owned tree”.