SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Amanda Quintero had just put her two children to bed when she and her husband both heard what sounded like a car crash outside their second-floor apartment at the Mission Villas Tuesday night.
Quintero said they wasted no time running to their front door, and then peering over the balcony.
They couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw a huge oak tree, which had stood outside their building, now on its side on top of a row of parked cars.
“My husband and I were both in shock,” Quintero said. “We were, like, ‘What? Is this real?’ At first, we thought it was a dream.”
The sight they saw at the apartment complex, not far from Pleasanton Road and Southwest Military Drive, turned into more of a nightmare for the owners of the cars Wednesday morning.
The tree landed on top of two compact cars, smashing the roof in on one of them. Some of the top branches also shattered the windshield of a pickup.
Quintero and her husband immediately ran downstairs to make sure no people were hurt.
“Thankfully, the cars were empty. But we got ahold of everyone who had the vehicles and alerted them about what happened,” she said.
One of the vehicles, a small black compact car, belonged to Dolores Montoya.
She had just returned home from a long road trip to South Carolina, and said she parked in the only available spot.
“It was full. We were just so tired, and we just parked it,” Montoya said.
Unluckily for her, it appeared her car, which she had already paid off in full, sustained major damage.
Now, she said, she may have to buy a new one.
“To start all over again now,” Montoya said, shaking her head. “We’re going to go see what we can do about it.”
In hindsight, both she and Quintero said there were signs of trouble.
When the wind picked up earlier in the day, they had noticed the tree was on shaky ground.
“You could see the tree was swaying and tipping over, and that’s when I knew it was going to fall,” Quintero said.
However, no one could have predicted when it would happen or where it would land.
Had the tree not fallen on the cars, there’s a chance it could have toppled in the opposite direction, landing on the apartment building, itself.
There were no reports of any injuries.