Courtney Buchholtz was on the couch relaxing when she heard a crash upstairs – leading to a terrifying discovery.
Friday night started like any other for Courtney Buchholtz and her family.
Ms Buchholtz, from Prairieville in the US state of Louisiana, gave her five-month-old son Cannon a bath and together with Ms Buchholtz’s husband Kale, the three said their nightly prayers. At 7.42pm, Ms Buchholtz put Cannon to bed and she and her husband sat down on the couch to relax.
There was a storm going on outside, but Ms Buchholtz said aside from being a little louder than usual, it didn’t seem dangerous.
However, just two minutes after they sat down, the couple heard a crash. Ms Buchholtz told Fox News that at first, she thought lightning had struck the house, but when she looked at the baby monitor on her phone, she saw debris falling onto Cannon.
“I got up immediately and ran,” Ms Buchholtz told Fox.
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“The whole house shook and I ran and I told my husband, you can hear me, I think in the video, saying, ‘Kale, the window.’ I thought the window had shattered into his crib.”
That wasn’t the case. Instead, a huge oak tree had fallen through the roof of the house, right over Cannon’s cot.
Ms Buchholtz and her husband ran to Cannon’s room, where the ceiling had fallen in and sheetrock and insulation were everywhere. Cannon was crying, which Ms Buchholtz took as a good sign: “You screamin’, you breathin’,” she said.
Once she got through the debris, Ms Buchholtz grabbed Cannon and took him to the sink to wash the insulation off his face and check for injuries.
“It was pretty terrifying,” Ms Buchholtz said.
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Thankfully, nothing heavier than the insulation had fallen onto Cannon, which BMs uchholtz attributed to her late son, who died in 2016 after being born prematurely.
“I truly, truly believe that (Cannon’s) big brother was there protecting him and making sure that nothing was going to happen to him,” Ms Buchholtz said.
After they made sure Cannon was safe, the family left to stay with a cousin nearby, where they’ve been staying since.
The tree – which actually isn’t even on the Buchholtz family property and is, instead on a neighbour’s land – damaged much more than just Cannon’s room.
Ms Buchholtz said she‘s waiting for more information from her insurance company.
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“Our hall bathroom is destroyed, too, and our bedroom and our bathroom,” Ms Buchholtz said.
She added: “Our house is completely unlivable right now. So we‘re just kind of waiting and see what insurance says and all that stuff.”
On top of the tree incident, Ms Buchholtz said her grandmother died on Sunday.
“We’re just kind of pushing forward, just kind of waiting to see how things play out,” Ms Buchholtz said.
This will be the second time Ms Buchholtz and her husband will have to fix their house. In August 2016, the Louisiana floods destroyed their home and it took them several months to rebuild.
“We‘ve done this before, unfortunately,” Ms Buchholtz said, ”But, you know, like I told someone before is, we’ll take this mess any day, you know, as long as we’re all safe and healthy and no one was hurt in what happened.”
“We‘re just very blessed and very, very thankful,” she added.
This story first appeared on Fox News and has been republished with permission.
