San Benito High School senior Lili Jeske was getting ready for morning swim practice at 5:45 a.m. on Friday when she and her mom, Gianna Gibson, heard a crash and felt their house on the 1300 block of West Street shake.
“Our power went out instantly and my mom checked the front yard and found that the tree in between our house and our neighbors fell on our house,” Jeske told BenitoLink. “We smelled gas right away and I called 911 and told them the tree fell and we smelled gas.”
Jeske and Gibson gathered their animals and waited across the street for five minutes for the Hollister Fire Department to arrive.
“When they arrived, we had to move down the street a ways because there were loose power lines,” said Jeske, who lives directly across the street from the high school. “My stepdad (Jeffrey Gibson) had left for work 25 minutes before this had all happened so he turned around and came back.”
Fire crews inspected the house and PG&E arrived at around 7:30 a.m. to dig up the sidewalk and part of front yard to access the main gas line that was leaking, Jeske said.
“They capped the line, assessed the damage. We are now waiting for the insurance company to send a tree removal company out here so we can move the tree and fix the gas line.” The gas leak was one of the reasons SBHS school officials chose to close the school.
Jeske and her family let back into their house around 9:30 a.m.
“We had to air out the house,” she said. “We don’t know the damage to the outside, but there was no damage on the inside.”
Do you have a storm story or photos to share? Contact BenitoLink Content Director Adam Breen by email at adambreen@benitolink.com.
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