“IT could have been a disaster!”

It had started as a lovely spring Sunday morning: Ray Wood,  reading in bed after a lazy wake up, when he heard a cracking noise out in the street.

He slid into his slippers and headed outside to find a 100-year-old pine tree had snapped and collapsed from the front of his 1898 home in East Fremantle’s Osborne Road, blocking the street.

• The fallen tree after the council cleaned up the road. Photo by Marta Pascual Juanola

“It wasn’t a big boom. It was just a cracking noise. The smaller branches cushioned it as it went,” Mr Wood told the Herald.

“I came out and said ‘what’s the problem?’ and they said ‘look over there’ it was all over the road and there was a crowd with all the neighbours that had come outside.”

Mr Wood’s home is just a few metres from Richmond primary school.

“There’s usually lots of cars parked in front. If it had been a week day there would be kids walking up the street to go to school. I’m glad nobody was passing by.”

Mr Wood says the tidy-up will involve teamwork with the town council.

“We get people coming and looking now. It’s probably the most exciting thing happening in East Fremantle in a while,” he laughs.

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA