Two homes on the same street on Long Island were damaged after trees slammed into them, and while no people were hurt, there is now a rush to rescue the cats inside one of the houses.<\/p>\n
One-by-one on Tuesday, cats trapped inside the Westbury home were pulled to safety, an answer to the prayers of their owner, Wendy Kimball.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019re my children, and they\u2019re the reason I get up every day,” Kimball said.<\/p>\n
She and her brother had to leave the cats behind Monday night after a massive red oak tree crashed into their home’s roof.<\/p>\n
“I ran upstairs absolutely hysterical.\u00a0My brother was in bed and I couldn\u2019t see him because the whole ceiling was on the bed.\u00a0I don\u2019t know how he lived,” said Kimball.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, neither Kimball nor her brother was hurt, but the damage inside was extensive, leaving the home unsafe for occupancy. <\/p>\n
A tree contractor said a second home just down the street was also hit by a falling tree. A family inside that home escaped injury as well.<\/p>\n
But for Kimball, she said what happened was “the worst thing that\u2019s happened to me since my mother died.” A self-described caregiver for wayward cats, Kimball’s home of 72 years was filled with more than three dozen cats when the tree came crashing down.<\/p>\n
After the tree fell, volunteer rescuers pulled eight cats from the home but had to give up their rescue effort because of safety concerns inside the home.<\/p>\n
“Within the hour we got out, that ceiling and wall collapsed. So we were pretty lucky,” rescuer Deb Oliver said.<\/p>\n
Oliver and another rescuer were only able to return Tuesday after an engineer concluded it was safe to go inside the home. The cats, they said, appear to be in good physical condition.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019re terrified, but they\u2019re healthy, they\u2019re clean. Some are crated, some are free roaming, but they\u2019re well taken care of,” said Oliver.<\/p>\n
The rescued cats will be moved to an undisclosed location to be cared for until they can return. Kimball said her only lament is that she didn\u2019t listen to advice to trim or take down the 72-year-old tree before the disaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As long as I can get my cats back and they\u2019re healthy…It was meant to be I think,” Kimball said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two homes on the same street on Long Island were damaged after trees slammed into them, and while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1457,776,9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-319293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-animals","tag-long-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}