A Sitka man narrowly escaped serious injury when gale-force winds early this morning pushed a large Sitka Spruce tree onto the roof of his home at 504 Charteris Street.
Sam Skaggs told the Daily Sitka Sentinel on Monday that he was in bed and sleeping through the wind storm when he realized a tree beside his home was beginning to fall.
“At 2 a.m. I heard this tree crack and start falling towards me, in my subconscious,” Skaggs said.
“I crawled out of bed, I knew it was coming for me,” he said. “I got down on the floor, I started crawling towards the doorway to get out of my bedroom and the entire tree smashed into my bed.”
The tree, 5 feet in diameter at its base and roughly 70 feet tall, had an eagle nest, and had special protection when the Skaggs house was built. As it crashed, the giant spruce took down another tree, 2 to 3 feet in diameter, which also hit the house.
When the trees hit, “the entire roof collapsed,” Skaggs said. “I was buried in sheetrock, two-by-fours, nails, and insulation. It took me a half an hour to get out.”
“My bedroom window was busted out,” he said. “I climbed out of the bedroom window onto the deck, and just started yelling. Billy, my neighbor, came and helped me get off the porch with a ladder that I had.”
His neighbors called emergency responders who arrived with an ambulance and checked Skaggs for injuries. He sustained some cuts from the structural collapse but was not hospitalized.
Skaggs, 72, has many friends and is well known in Sitka as a philanthropist and supporter of civic and educational organizations.
His wife Amy is out of town, and was scheduled to return today. His son Drake flew in from Juneau this morning.
Skaggs said that if he had remained in bed, the falling tree likely would have killed him. Tree speciaists from Absolute Tree Care were on site this morning removing portions of the trees in the wreckage, and said portions of the branches of the tree fell directly onto the pillows on the bed where Skaggs was sleeping.
Skaggs said he believes that the shear wall built through the middle of the house, that was built by Richard Doland in 2015, likely kept the house from collapsing more.
Around 7 a.m., Skaggs called friends in Sitka to recount the overnight events and assure them he was OK.
Cleo Brylinsky, one of many people who showed up at Skaggs’ home to help him process the calamity and recover items from the home, spoke to the Sentinel outside the damaged house at around 11 a.m. today.
“I arrived around 7:45 and there were so many people here,” Brylinsky said.
She said Skaggs’ neighbors Nancy and Bill Davidson helped in the immediate aftermath, and throughout the day.
Another of Skaggs’ friends, Monique Anderson, followed him with a water bottle all morning to make sure he stayed hydrated.
Steve Clayton, Lisa Busch and other friends spent hours hauling belongings to Clayton’s home, and other places in the neighborhood where possessions could be stored.
Some of the work involved sorting dry items from water-logged items, Brylinsky said.
“The trees damaged the plumbing, electrical, and there’s a lot of water in the bottom of the house,” Brylinsky said. “There is a lot of damage to a lot of things.”
A National Weather Service meteorologist reported that gusts at the Sitka Airport weather station reached 50 to 57 miles per hour between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. today, with sustained east/southeast winds of 30 to 35 miles per hour at that time. Skaggs’ home is situated at roughly 170 feet in elevation.