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A Minor Landmark Felled By Thunderstorm
posted (September 7, 2011)
So far we've told you about a pair of houses in the city, a main transformer in Independence Village and vast acreages of banana crops damaged by last night's powerful thunderstorm.

And tucked in somewhere between all that major damage, a sort of city landmark was also destroyed by the thunderstorm.

The stately mahogany tree which has been standing in the Holy Redeemer playground yard for decades, possibly more than a century was zapped by a lightning bolt, and the proud, stout tree which has provided shelter to generations of children, snapped like a twig.

It happened after 2:00 am - just after the thunderstorm descended on the city - and a neighbor spoke lovingly of her former favourite tree and the moment of its undoing under the thunderstorm's hot breath:

Ophelia Carillo - Lived next to the ancient Mahogany
"This morning, a thunderstorm happened. Wind was blowing and there was a lightning. The wind blew open my room door. That's how I got up. My nephew sleeps right next to the window, and woke me up because of the breeze blowing in the house. All of us got up, and we looked through the window. We couldn't see the tree due to the rain being so thick. We heard a lightning strike. We actually heard the cracking of the tree. That was 2:23 this morning. It's very sad to lose the mahogany tree because it is a 100+ years-old tree. Even up to know, when my children goes and play in the yard, I would sit by the tree and watch them playing. That's was the shelter spot from you were small. It is the shelter for the kids for the yard. It is valued to everybody in different ways, because they experienced the tree differently. From old to young, everyone has a value for this tree. I can't tell you, but for me it's very sad, because it's not there again. It will disappear. It will take long for a next one to grow. By then, I'll already be dead."

We were trying to dig up some history on the tree - to see how old it was.

No one seemed to know for sure, and some guess-timates say that it stood for well over a century.

But there are no sure answers and it is a mystery, that, apparently, only the old tree would know the answer to...

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