Irene's Winds Tear Through Small Section of Braintree

Janet Baiungo was watching television with her two grandchildren when a crash brought her outside to investigate what at first she thought might have been an airplane.

Patrick Po had breakfast on the table when he saw his tree start to go, then scrape the side of his house and nearly demolish his car, parked in the driveway.

Across the street, Arthur Morgan was also in front of the TV, watching the news in a room on the second floor of his house on Standish Avenue in Braintree when a tree branch crashed through his roof like a spear, raining plaster down on his head.

Residents of the Highlands section of Braintree, and specifically a few blocks around Brewster and Standish avenues, felt the brunt of the storm when . Four homes in the area sustained so much damage that the families had to leave, by order of the town's building inspector.

Two additional families had to leave their homes unoccupied in North Braintree, each the victim of sharp blasts that emerged from the steady 30 to 40 mph winds felt by most of the town. No serious injuries were reported in South Braintree or elsewhere, Fire Chief Kevin Murphy said.

Highlands residents reported that sometime around 11 a.m. on Sunday the fast winds suddenly materialized out of what had been an otherwise unremarkable stormy morning.

"We were supposed to have heavy winds starting at three," Morgan said. "I think they started a little early."

The isolated event was not a microburst, as they are normally associated with thunderstorm activity, and none was detected by the regional National Weather Service monitoring team.

Rather, because this area of Braintree is about 350 feet above sea level, what most likely happened is that strong winds, 15 to 20 mph faster than the sustained movement, were able to reach the surface level and topple trees that were mature, with full canopies and whose soil was satured with water, NWS meteorologist Bill Simpson said.

"Once one falls, they kind of influence the others," Simpson said.

Falling debris knocked over David Cunningham's fence and fell in his pool on Brewster Avenue. But Cunningham, who is the chair of the School Committee, said he felt lucky compared to how many of his neighbors fared.

"It was like someone dropped a bomb in the Highlands," he said.

One block over, a large tree was uprooted and laying across Mike Crane's yard and electric wires on Monday morning.

Crane said that the tree came down, ripping up from its roots, at about 10:30 a.m. on Sunday. It did not damage his home or cause any injuries, but its weight took down electric and cable lines.

When the juice came back on an hour later, Crane said, he was surprised and also concerned.

"Nobody is going near that thing until the wire is down," Crane said.

On Brewster, Richard Roche was working Monday with his crew on removing a chunk of an enormous pine tree that had snapped off and fallen onto the roof of a house.

The homeowner's daughter had been home at the time, he said, when it smashed through the house, causing considerable damage. A crane is scheduled to lift off the last of the limb on Tuesday, and also remove the tree itself from the backyard.

"Don't be an amature," Hal Larson, a landscaper and arborist working with Roche said, as a warning to those with tree debris on their property. "Let the professionals do the tree work."

Jerry Bannon came to Braintree a week ago from New York to visit his daughter and son-in-law, who live on Standish Avenue, next to Janet Baiungo's house.

On Sunday morning, he was out in the yard picking up chairs under a relatively calm sky. Suddenly, the "the wind and sound was horrible," and Bannon saw branches crack across the street at Morgan's house.

"Let's get inside, the storm is coming," he said to his daughter's husband.

But just then a tree from next door, from Po's yard, came crashing down, its leaves only brushing Bannon's car parked out front. "It was loud," Bannon said, "it was loud."

Meanwhile, Baiungo was inside her house watching television with her family. A tree in Bannon's daughter's yard was the next to go, cracking near the base, twisting and falling onto Baiungo's roof, splaying leaves and branches across the front windows of her house, exciting her grandkids.

"I like the excitement," she said. "But I don't like the damage."

The roof was smashed enough that the town's building inspector, Russell Forsberg, said the family could not stay. If water sneaks through the hole caused by the tree, it could damage vital safety equipment like smoke detectors.

Baiungo said a preliminary cost estimate is $50,000 to $100,000, because of the structural damage. On Monday, she awaited word on how the tree would be removed from her house – another estimate put that at $1,500 – and also on a visit from the insurance adjuster.

"It's disheartening," she said. "We've been here 40 years and nothing like this has happened."

Later, the neighborhood became somewhat of a circus, Bannon said, with government officials coming through to assess damage, a helicopter overhead, residents driving by to look, and TV news crews arriving to interview the families.

Baiungo and her family will spend the foreseeable future at her daughter's house in Wrentham, where Irene also wrought havoc, causing widespread power outages. Still, she said it was nice to light candles there and spend time on old-fashioned pursuits.

"It was a novelty for them to play boardgames," she said. "There's always a bright side when no one gets hurt."