‘It shook the whole house’ – powerful weekend storm causes damage

A powerful thunderstorm uprooted trees and caused major property damage in the Martinsville section of Bridgewater Sunday evening.

News 12 Staff

Jul 22, 2019, 8:49 PM

Updated 1,970 days ago

Share:

A powerful thunderstorm uprooted trees and caused major property damage in the Martinsville section of Bridgewater Sunday evening.
Trees fell all across homeowner Lenny Frega’s property Sunday night. The storm uprooted a large oak tree and sent dozens of branches crashing down on his home.
He says that he was home with his wife around 7 p.m. Sunday when the trees started to fall.
“That came down and shook the ground. You could feel it in the basement,” Frega says. "It shook the whole house. They all did, each one shook the house."
Frega was out Monday morning trying to clear away as many branches as he could. His driveway was still impassable by Monday afternoon due to the debris.
Frega says that nine trees came down during the storm. He described it as a wall of water from the sky followed by strong winds.
"The first [tree] here just twisted and up in the air, twisted and came down. It was wild pretty wild,” he says.
Two blocks away in the Spring Run neighborhood, neighbors said that the storm came very fast after what had been a calm Sunday afternoon.
"All of the patio furniture and the cushions came forward and just we heard all these cracking noises. It was really crazy,” says resident Kelly Loffredo.
Crews from the utility company were spotted around the neighborhoods Monday attempting to fix downed power lines and restore power.
The residents say that being without power has been hard due to the lack of air conditioning and fans along with the high temperatures. The residents also get their water from wells, so they could not access water with the power outage.