HOLLY HILL, Fla. – A Volusia County man and his stepson narrowly escaped their home after a tree crashed through the roof during Hurricane Matthew.
Vernon Vanduyne and Joshua Richardson say they were sitting in the living room of their home on Dal Maso Drive in Holly Hill on Friday watching the storm roar through their neighborhood.
"We heard a boom, and then we both turned and the house started slowly shaking," Vanduyne told News 6. "The plaster started popping off the walls, and we both turned and looked, and you could hear stuff break. Then all of a sudden, the ceiling just crashed down."
"I was like, 'We got to get out of here,'" Richardson said. "He's frantically running around trying to grab something, I was like, 'We've got to go now. We've got to get out of this house.'"
They said the front door wouldn't open, so they had to throw a stereo speaker through the front window, and they climbed out into the storm.
Vanduyne said he had sent his wife and five grandchildren to ride out the storm with friends. If they had stayed home, someone may have been killed, he said.
Vanduyne said the tree's trunk is 11 1/2 feet around, and the root system is 12 feet high and 25 feet across.
He said the house is not livable, and he doesn't know what he and his family will do.
Utility crews restored power to his neighbors Monday night.
He doesn't have power. He said he's camping out in front of the home to keep looters away and to make sure he doesn't miss FEMA.
"What can you do?" he asked. "I can't be mad about it. It happened. Move on."