A massive oak tree, estimated to be nearly 400 years old and 19 feet around, came crashing to the ground Friday behind a historic Citrus Heights home on Sunrise Boulevard.
“It sounded like a bomb went off,” said renter Scott Ruiz, recalling when the tree came down around noon on Friday. Knowing his son was in the backyard at the time, he said his first instinct was to call out his son’s name to make sure he was okay.
“My heart was in my throat,” recalled Ruiz, who was quickly relieved when he found out his son had been able to run out of the way of the tree.
“It happened right in front of me,” his son Garret told The Sentinel. “I heard it cracking and I started running.”
No one was injured in the incident, but two of the Ruiz family vehicles had their front windshields smashed by branches and one vehicle sustained damage to the hood.
The elder Ruiz said plans to remove the tree are still to be decided, but said the issue had been discussed with property owner Richard Kniesel, whose family runs Kniesel’s Auto Service.
Reached by phone Friday, Kniesel called the tree a beautiful “focal point of the whole back yard,” but said the tree also had a history of breaking off large branches.
“In a way I’m really sad because it’s 400 years old, supposedly,” said Kniesel. “But in a way I’m happy I don’t have to worry about it any more, the danger of people walking around under the tree.”
Kniesel said the historic home on the 8200 block of Sunrise Boulevard was built in 1868. He said in the 1970’s, an arborist with Sacramento County had first told him about the age of the tree being around 400 years old.
Related: Local arborist shares 6 warning signs your tree could uproot, fall in a storm
Regina Cave, a management analyst with the city’s general services department, told The Sentinel the city had estimated the tree to be 372 years old when an attempt to calculate the age was made in 2013.
Another oak tree estimated to be around 400 years old is located in front of the new memory care facility at 6825 Sunrise Blvd., near Woodmore Oaks Drive, in Citrus Heights.
If estimates are correct, the trees would have begun to grow around the same time the Pilgrims arrived in America on the Mayflower in the year 1620.
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