‘Never seen anything like this’: Scores of Portland area residents displaced after trees crash through homes

Bruce Williams was in his Lake Oswego living room on Saturday when he looked out the window and saw his neighbor’s tree coming down. It was headed for his yard, so Williams started yelling for his family. As he ran toward the room where his twin 12 year old sons were playing video games, the ceiling came down.

After a few seconds of commotion and panic, his sons popped up from the debris. “The tree just missed them,” Williams said. Oregon is known for its abundance of tree lined neighborhoods, but those lush and coveted canopies that help keep neighborhoods cool during the summer can present serious problems during high winds and winter weather.

Williams’ family is one of several who’ve been displaced by falling trees during this weekend’s winter storm. Portland area residents reported limbs or trees falling on roofs, and two people so far have died in separate incidents of trees falling on homes — one in Lake Oswego and the other in Southeast Portland.

Now that Williams and his family are out of the house, they’ve got a long wait ahead as they get the roof replaced. The neighborhood is filled with tall trees, he said — on his property alone there are about 10 massive fir trees, over 150 feet tall. Even though he tries to keep his own trees pruned and have an arborist come out annually to remove dead limbs, the risks still remain.

“If one goes down, it’s not going to stay on somebody’s lot,” he said. “If you get enough ice built up on them or wind, they break loose.” Despite those risks, Williams said they’ve run into challenges when trying to get trees removed from their yard. The city of Lake Oswego has a tree code, which requires property owners to get permits to remove trees.

The city hasn’t always granted them, he said, even when the trees are presenting structural issues. Some in the Portland area wonder how easy it would be to remove old or dangerous trees due to city conservation codes. Two large trees crashed through the home of Rukaiyah Adams over the weekend. Adams is the chief executive officer of the 1803 fund, a nonprofit dedicated to rebuilding the historically Black Albina community in North and Northeast Portland.

In the block near her Southwest home in the Southwest Hills neighborhood, four large Douglas fir trees toppled down, with two penetrating her roof and the structure of her home. She is currently in a hotel since her home is not livable and the severe weather has prevented tree removal companies from responding.

Adams said her home is in a conservation overlay zone which aims to conserve historical trees and shade cover. She said she isn’t sure if these trees should have previously been cut down, but she does wonder how overlay zones might impact homeowner safety and what the city’s responsibility is to homeowners.

A city spokesperson said he couldn’t answer questions until after the winter storm, but city code for a conservation area appears to indicate trees can be cut down in limited situations, including if the city determines the trees pose an immediate danger. “Imagine the largest Douglas fir tree you’ve ever seen – two are in my home,” Adams said.

“It is so unsettling.” In Southwest Portland’s Bridlemile neighborhood on Saturday afternoon, a 130 foot Douglas fir took out the back corner of Michelle and Jay Rafter’s detached two story garage, before falling through the roof of their neighbor’s unoccupied home. They spent the rest of the day making “a frenzy of phone calls,” to alert their neighbor, and then trying to find tree service providers who could come out to assess the damage.

Companies were slammed with callers across the metro area who had downed trees. The uncertainties piled up, Michelle Rafter said. They didn’t know whether the tree had further damaged the garage structure and if it was at risk of falling on their house. They had no way to get their cars out of the garage or see whether they had been damaged.

A service provider came out on Monday and removed the garage door. Both cars were OK, Rafter said, and they moved them out. Now, she said, the tree service is trimming the tree and will slowly cut it into smaller chunks so it can be hauled away. She praised the tree companies for their responsiveness despite the widespread need.

But Rafter said the level of damage is still jarring to her. “Within a six block radius of our house I saw five houses that either had trees in the yard, on the roof, or crashed from their house onto the neighbor’s roof,” she said. “We’ve lived here for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.” —Jayati Ramakrishnan; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com —Nicole Hayden; nhayden@oregonian.com.