SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- There was a big mess in the Santa Cruz Mountains Thursday. Sky7 HD video showed Highway 17 near the summit, where a tree fell blocking all lanes. Crews were able to quickly reopen one lane in each direction. All lanes are open now. Trees caused a lot of problems across the Bay Area Wednesday night.
It was a brief, but potent storm that pushed through the Bay Area overnight, leaving a series of downed trees and damaged cars in its wake.
In Alamo, a big oak came down crushing two cars in the driveway. Down the road in Danville, a birch tree fell across the driveway of one home, narrowly missing the structure itself. And in the Oakland Hills, it was a Monterey pine that toppled over, snapping off power lines and damaging Christian Bedon's white work van.
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"We're pretty lucky, we always worry about this tree. The first thing in my mind was the tree is coming down over our head," Bedon said.
In Walnut Creek, it was all about prevention at another house where crews spent the morning removing an Oak tree's overweight limbs, precariously extended over the house below.
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"I guess the insurance is making the homeowner prune their trees so they don't break on their house, for safety," Ramon Argona from Waraner Tree Service said.
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That is to make sure nothing falls on the house in the next storm.
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