HARTFORD, Conn. -- Jane Pulcini was walking up the stairs in her Newington, Conn., home Sunday around 11 a.m. when Hurricane Irene split an oak tree in her front yard, crashing a huge limb into the roof.
"So I'm going up the stairs, and I thought I heard thunder," said Pulcini, who raised five sons in the house and lived there with her husband, Guido "Guy" Pulcini, until he died a year and a half ago. "The noise was so loud, I just couldn't imagine what it was."
Sitting on the stairs of her 1960s split-level Garrison colonial, she could see the tree through a front window. Since moving to the home in 1963, she has filed three insurance claims. Two were this year -- one for ice damming on the roof last winter and now the oak tree. Pulcini had just put on a new room in July.
"Why couldn't the tree fall toward the street?" she said.
By Tuesday, Scott Wallquist, a claims adjuster with The Travelers Cos., was walking on her roof, measuring the square footage and surveying the damage. Front and back gutters would need to be replaced, she would need a new roof, and he plans to hire an inspector to see if the chimney still intact.
