staten island advance.

falling tree crushes car, traps 4.
cops pull out husband, who is slightly hurt, and wife, infant daughter and sister-in-law, who are uninjured.
9.19.2003

Three adults and an infant were trapped and nearly crushed inside their car last night when a gust of wind uprooted a massive tree in Great Kills.

At approximately 10:40 p.m., the 60-foot tree on McKee Avenue was yanked out of the ground and landed diagonally across the car - flattening the roof, shattering the windows and folding the driver's side like an accordion.

Steve Mavis, his wife, Julie, their 1-year-old daughter, Gianna, and sister-in-law, Jennifer Roldan, were returning from Long Island, where the entire family attended a wake together.

Mavis was pulling into his father-in-law's driveway when he saw a tidal wave of dirt, then felt the roof slam into his head.

All four were pulled from the car by Officers Richard Trapanese and Ronald Shepard of the Staten Island Task Force, who happened to be driving along the street when the tree careened over. Only Mavis reported injuries, all of them minor.

The officers said they heard screams coming from the car and rushed to call emergency units. He was "surprised the driver wasn't dead," Trapanese said. When the tree fell, little Gianna was in the middle of the back seat, which looked from the outside to be completely crushed.

"There was a dome around her. It was unbelievable," Mavis said later, rocking his crying daughter, who didn't have a scratch.

The tree also demolished the driver's side of an adjacent Toyota Corolla and badly damaged the roof and upstairs apartment of Carl Roldan's house.

"It's actually very lucky the houses were here, or the tree really would have crushed the car," said Officer Scott McCarthy of the Emergency Services Unit (ESU).

The tree's roots, 20 feet long, stood perpendicular to the ground after its fall. ESU officers used chainsaws to cut up the trunk and get it off the house and cars.

"This is why people can't be outside in this wind," McCarthy said. "There's no telling the damage trees are going to do."