Woburn Fire Chief: Woman Struck By Tree 'Fortunate' To Survive

WOBURN, MA -- The woman struck by a massive oak tree that was toppled during Friday's wind storm sustained a significant leg injury but was "fortunate" that it was not more serious. Rescue crews cut power to the area and then used airbags and the jaws of life to lift the tree off of the woman, who was walking on Main Street to the Wyman School to pick up her son.

"The tree that fell on the lady is massive," Jamey Gadoury said in an email to Woburn Patch in the hours after the incident. There were initial reports that a child had been injured when the tree fell, but those reports were later corrected to clarify that only the mother was injured.

Woburn Fire Chief Stephen Adgate told the Boston Herald that the woman was "in the wrong place at the wrong time." Once freed, the woman was transported to an area hospital with a significant but non-life threatening injury to her leg.

"It was the entire tree," Adgate told the newspaper. "She was very fortunate that it wasn't a lot more serious."

There are multiple reports of downed trees throughout the region and a growing list of injuries as a Nor'easter brought windy, wet weather and sustained wind gusts topping 45 miles per hour to Massachusetts. In Tewksbury, a driver of a Jeep was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries after a tree fell on his vehicle.

For more on this story, see the Boston Herald. Subscribe to Woburn Patch for more local news and real-time alerts.

Photo by Jamey Gadoury.
Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).