![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Tree-onto-house.jpg\")
<\/p>\nEmergency crews from numerous companies from Berks and Lebanon counties teamed up to rescue a woman from her South Mountain home after a fallen tree cut through the roof overnight and pinned her in bed.<\/p>\n
Crews were called shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday to the home in the 600 block of Furnace Street in Heidelberg Township, about 2 miles south of Robesonia, for a report of a tree into a house with trapped occupants.<\/p>\n
Upon arrival, Robesonia Fire Company Chief John Christman reported the second floor was completely collapsed. A crew confirmed an occupant was pinned by a 100- to 200-foot tree and debris.<\/p>\n
With all of that weight resting on the ground floor and the patient unable to be easily removed by medics, Christman assessed it would be a complex rescue requiring the expertise and manpower of other companies.<\/p>\n
He dispatched the collapse unit from Boyertown Fire & Rescue to shore up the structure and Spring Township Fire Rescue Services for their technical rescue expertise.<\/p>\n
Because of the potential crushing injuries to the patient and possible need for pre-hospitalization blood transfusion, the fire chief requested Squad 6899, which is the Tower Health critical care truck, to assist a Western Berks Ambulance crew.<\/p>\n
The critical care truck, based at Reading Hospital, is staffed by pre-hospital critical care nurses. The team, which is available to all Berks fire, police and emergency medical services, can administer transfusions on-scene to patients with traumatic injuries.<\/p>\n
Crews used rescue tools to make space between the tree and the patient\u2019s upper body. They also employed a technique known as cribbing \u2014 stacking interlocking blocks to create a support system to stabilize heavy objects to prevent unpredictable movement or collapse during a rescue.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(COURTESY OF ROBESONIA FIRE COMPANY<\/p>\n
A heavy-duty wrecker is used to free a woman who was trapped under a fallen tree on the second floor of her home in Heidelberg Township early Thursday. (COURTESY OF ROBESONIA FIRE COMPANY)<\/p>\n
Plans were devised for freeing the patient, with one involving a request to Spitler\u2019s Garage & Towing, Wernersville, to bring in one of its heavy wreckers. Once on scene, crews began to rig the tree for lifting.<\/p>\n
After about two exhausting hours, the patient was removed from the second floor and taken to a Western Berks ambulance unit for transport to Reading Hospital. Information on her medical condition was not immediately available.<\/p>\n
Christman said he can only surmise the windy conditions caused the tree to topple. Robesonia Fire Company, as with others, were extremely busy between 9 p.m. Wednesday and about the time the tree fell onto house due to steady winds of 25 to 30 mph.<\/p>\n
Numerous trees were toppled after a brief thunderstorm with gusts exceeding 60 mph cut through Berks on Wednesday night. A top gust of 61 mph was recorded at Reading Regional Airport during the storm, according to National Weather Service data.<\/p>\n
About 1,700 Met-Ed customers were without power Thursday morning in the aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emergency crews from numerous companies from Berks and Lebanon counties teamed up to rescue a woman from her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,20362,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-32312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-heidelberg-township","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}