Teen on the mend after tree falls into house during storm

Yahoo

20-05-2025

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – A massive tree came down and crashed into an East Side home on March 30.
A 13-year-old was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the tree came down and she was pinned by a thick branch, her foot through the floor and stuck there for about an hour.
Now, the teen is out of the hospital and the family is living in a hotel. That teen, Kallie Frederick, recalls exactly what happened that night.
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'My grandma had told me to come listen to the wind because she had never heard something like this,' Kallie Frederick said. 'I heard a branch or a tree snapping or something and I knew that, like, something was up. Like something was totally going to go wrong.'
'I was standing there and I was talking about the wind, and I didn't get about, like, maybe two words out, and the tree had fell and I was shocked,' she added. 'I couldn't think anything. I was just traumatized. I was just shocked. I was just traumatized. I just kind of couldn't even say anything.'
'That's when you heard the tree hit the house,' Kallie's grandfather Pat Frederick said. 'Glass busting and the ceiling tile and the four by eights and stuff come down into the living room. She got caught by a 32-inch branch, and it drove her foot into the floor.'
The tree, at least six feet in diameter near the base, came down over the chimney, with branches penetrating the living room right where Kallie stood and her grandfather sat in his recliner.
'It happened so quick when it hit the house, I wasn't sure what had happened, and then as all the noise and the glass and the stuff coming down from the ceiling, I close my eyes and when I opened my eyes, the tree was literally from about this far. It was about 12 inches away,' Pat Frederick said.
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That night of March 30, the National Weather Service confirmed five tornadoes in Ohio and two more from the same storm in Indiana. Wind gusts were rampant that night as well, many recorded up to 60 miles per hour. That's likely what brought down the large tree at the edge of a wooded area off of Noe Bixby Road in the Fredericks' backyard.
'I was thinking about trying to get this leg out of the way and try to run as fast as I can, but I was just, I just couldn't make it and the tree fell,' Kallie Frederick said. 'My, like, foot had drove into the basement and I was stuck. After about an hour or so, I was finally released out of it and they put me into the stretcher, and they got me in the ambulance.'
Columbus firefighters arrived at the scene along with paramedics that night. They had to go into the basement of the home to prop up the floor in order to get Kallie's leg freed from the tree branch.
'They were saying, 'It's going to be okay. You're going to be safe,' and then the ambulance and fire department reassured me that I was going to be okay,' Kallie Frederick said.
The frightening moments of living through the storm and tree crashing down on top of her continue to haunt Kallie, especially when there is the threat of a thunderstorm, common during the spring and summer in Ohio.
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'I couldn't sleep for one night because of how traumatized and scared and, it was just, wasn't my normal bed, and I was just scared,' she said. 'It was scary. It was just so scary how the tree just fell right through the chimney.'
Kallie said she already had a fear of storms since she was very young.
'Ever since I was little, I've been scared of thunderstorms,' Kallie Frederick said. 'Even if the power goes out or I'm in the dark in the hallway, I'm just scared of everything and now that I saw a tree fell, I'm scared of trees now.'
'I have had the tree stuck in my mind for quite a while,' she added. 'I just can't get it out of my head. Makes me cry, makes me sad. It just makes me everything.'
Life is starting to get back to normal for the Fredericks. Kallie is back in school, and she's off the crutches and in a walking boot.
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'I was actually out of school for a month,' she said. 'Ever since the incident happened, I just recently got to school on Wednesday the 14th and I had gone to school. Everybody was nice. They were concerned about me. They were really worried for me.'
The family is still living in a hotel. The home is a wreck inside and out after the tree sat there for weeks before it was removed. Pat Frederick said raccoons have been in and out of the home often since then, tearing the place apart, but they are still grateful and thankful to be alive.
'If it had gone a few minutes one way or the other, or the tree had gone 12 inches one way or the other, we probably wouldn't be here,' he said.
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