GREENSBORO, N.C. — The weekend ice storm left trees weighted, and weak.
Summer Kinney said a massive tree crushed her car parked in the driveway of her Greensboro home.
“As soon as I put my head down on the pillow I heard the biggest boom outside,” Kinney explained. “It had smashed the roof of my car in and busted out both windows.”
It destroyed everything inside too, like her kids' car seats. Kinney said she’s a single mother and that car was vital to her family.
“That's our only means of transportation so now I can't go to school, they can't go to school. We can’t go to doctor appointments. One instant everything is fine and the next pretty much everything is in ruins.”
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Kinney is not alone. Trees fell on cars, power lines and homes across the Triad.
A spokesman for the Greensboro Fire Department said they got 265 calls on Saturday alone. That’s more than double the department’s average call log. Eighty of those calls were ‘electrical hazards,’ or in other words, downed power lines.
Tree removal companies are working around the clock to clean up the mess.
“Parts of Greensboro are bad,” Todd Gosnell said. He’s the owner of Triad Tree Pro Services. “We were in Kernersville on Sunday and Kernersville got hit particularly hard and the northern part of High Point.”
Gosnell said he’s gotten about sixty calls since Saturday.
“It doesn't take a lot of ice to bring the trees down," Gosnell said. "The scale of the work is drastic; it could be a few limbs then it could be like this property in Oak Ridge with 30 trees down which will take me a couple days."
Gonsell's words of advice: don't fall for scammers.
“I would hire a quality crew. People get taken advantage of in these emergency storm situations. I grew up in High Point and I heard horror stories about contractors who come in request half of the payment upfront on a contract. Never give a trade contractor any money upfront, make sure they do quality work and only pay them once the job is completed."
