A Riverhead family’s ‘rude awakening’ as tall oak crashes through roof

“It was a rude awakening,” said Danny Battaglia of Riverhead.

He and his wife Connie were sound asleep in a first-floor bedroom of their Ostrander Avenue home this morning when a severe thunderstorm roared overhead at about 6:15.

Suddenly the big old oak tree in their backyard exploded through their roof. The falling oak ripped off the top of their brick chimney and wrecked a large section of roof on their wood-frame cape, crashing through the attic and right into their bedroom.

A large branch came through the ceiling and fell to the floor next to their bed. Rain came pouring in.

“We didn’t know what was going on,” Battaglia said. “At first we though lightning hit the house, but then the branch and the rain came pouring in.”

Frightened, Battaglia said he raced upstairs to his daughter’s bedroom. Thankfully, the tree entered the attic portion of the second story and not her room, where she, too, had been fast asleep.

“The whole top of the house is wrecked,” Battaglia said. About 90 minutes after the storm’s unwelcome visit, he stood outside surveying the damage and trying to figure out what to do next. He’d called his insurance agent and a tree company, he said. He was due at the airport at 8:30 a.m. for a trip to Tennessee for a Moose convention, he said.

The felled oak was about a hundred years old, Battaglia said. It’s trunk was about three-and-a-half feet in diameter.

“We’re very lucky no one got hurt,” he said.

The storm brought down numerous trees and limbs across Riverhead, downing power lines and leaving about 2,500 customers without power in the area, according to PSEG-LI.  See story.