As the sun was going down last Friday, a ray of light arrived in the form of a contractor crew from Long Island Power Authority for one Prospect Street resident in Williston Park with a tree fallen on her house.
Suzanne Krudner of 41 Prospect Street said she had been visited by village Department of Williston Park crews who told her they couldn’t do anything about the tree, which was also leaning against Verizon Fios power lines, until a LIPA crew arrived.
The irony was not lost on Krudner that the strong, teflon-coated fiber optic lines that held back the tree belonged to Verizon, for whom she formerly worked.
She said she recalled the moment the tree struck the house at approximately 7 p.m. on the night Hurricane Sandy struck.
“I think what we heard was the uprooting of the tree coming down,” she said.
For the remainder of the evening, as the wind continued, she and her fiance continued to hear a loud, recurrent thumping sound produced, she thought, by one of the tree limbs.
“When it did that, the whole house shook. It was terrifying,” said Krudner, who was also grateful that damage was limited to a small hole in her roof. “We’re lucky. God’s looking out for me.”
So to the rescue on Friday afternoon came the crew from Brentwood-based IPC Contracting. IPC foreman Fidel Santos decided he would risk removing the tree by cutting around the live secondary power lines – 220 volt lines – that the tree leaned against.
Climbing into the bucket on the mechanical arm of his truck, Santos deftly controlled its movement from a control panel in the bucket, positioning it by a limb, tying the limb off with a rope attached to his bucket, severing the limb with his chain saw and then dropping the limb by rope to the ground. Another member of the crew removed it, Santos retracted the rope and repeated the process, adeptly trimming the limbs clear of the house as one main trunk of the tree remained leaning against the power lines.
Taking an impromptu break while a crew member refueled his chain saw, Santos said he’d enjoyed life in the treetops. As a kid growing up in El Salvador, he used to climb trees for mangos and coconuts. Now he was clambering around trees to make a living, he said.
“Every tree is a different experience,” he said, smiling and adding that it “feels good” to be helping people.
