CASCADE, Idaho — High winds swept through much of Idaho on Wednesday, causing damage across the state — including in Cascade, where several homes were hit by falling trees.
At the Leisure Time RV Park, neighbors jumped into action to stop unstable trees from crashing into homes.
Joel Pak, who lives in the park, said he’s been dealing with downed trees all day. On Wednesday, he and neighbors acted quickly to protect his neighbor David Steece’s house.
Watch how Joel and his neighbors worked together to save David's house:
Using a winch on another neighbor’s truck, they tied a cable around the tree and pulled it down away from the house.
“We have a great community here and I'm so glad everybody's pitching in to look out for each other,” said David Steece, who lives at Leisure Time RV Park and works as the caretaker.
Steece said this wasn’t the only tree to come down near his home during the storm — nearly his entire backyard of trees came down too, damaging his fence.
Neighbors explained that the soil in Cascade has a lot of sand beneath the dirt — which makes it hard for tree roots to get established deeper in the soil.
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“The wind and the rain was going pretty good, and I thought, man, my gazebo is about to fly off, so I opened the back door and just then I saw the trees start to fall and it was like dominoes,” Steece said.
While a many homes were unscathed, some houses and trailers in the park sustained extensive damage.
“We did the best we could. But we saved a few homes, but unfortunately some homes got destroyed and as we were looking at all the destruction, more and more trees started coming down, landing on homes, this, that, we were scrambling trying to get neighbors…. We’re just happy that the residents and everybody was safe,” Pak said.
Residents say some trees are still unstable. They have been marking them for removal in hopes of preventing more damage if high winds return.
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