Devastating twist after couple's 'lucky' escape from tree that destroyed home
The debris trapped Pamela in her chair, but David was able to stand up and grab a nearby mobile phone.
An Aussie couple are lucky to be alive after a peaceful afternoon watching TV on their beloved houseboat and home of 23 years was shattered by an enormous falling gum tree.
On Tuesday afternoon, Pamela, 77, and David, 82, were sitting next to each other in their red armchairs at the front of their boat — named Pamela’s Joy — when wild storms rolled in.
Parked on the Murray River outside of Renmark, South Australia, the pair were listening to the rain and howling wind when all of a sudden the vessel appeared to implode.
“At the time they didn’t know what happened,” the couple’s granddaughter Shenay told Yahoo News on Friday.
“They kind of thought the boat had exploded before realising it was a tree that had fallen on them. They were both sitting just inches from where the main part of the tree fell. It missed them by the tiniest bit.”
Couple miraculously survive tree fall
Surrounded by debris — their lifetime of memories broken into pieces — David was able to stand up through a hole in what was their roof and reach for a mobile phone as Pamela was trapped under the rubble.
Emergency services rushed to the scene via boat and pulled the pair, and their sausage dog Kodie, off the boat and into a tinnie. They were then evaluated in an ambulance on a nearby bank, but miraculously only walked away with “a few cuts and bruises”, Shenay said, adding their entire family “can’t believe they both walked out of it unscathed”.
“Somebody was definitely watching over them that day,” she said.
Elderly couple lose 'everything'
Although extremely grateful for their survival, the elderly couple are now coming to the realisation that “they have lost everything”, their granddaughter, 28, said.
Pamela’s Joy — which the pair had just recently moved from its moored spot in Renmark after flooding forced its closure — was moved and secured on Thursday so Pam and David’s family could get on board and search for anything “salvageable”.
“We got clothing and photos… the bare minimum off, and the rest is pretty much a write-off,” Shenay said. “They had to remove the front of the roof completely for us to be able to safely gain access.”
In a gut-wrenching twist, the couple’s insurance lapsed within the past 12 months when Shenay said the company told her grandparents they could no longer cover people living in houseboats.
“We just keep thinking we’re so grateful and they’re so lucky to be here but at the same time it’s so tragic,” she said.
Pam and David are now living with family as they await a response from Housing SA, and their community is rallying around in support. A GoFundMe page has been created to help the couple get back on their feet, so far raising $1,600 of its $50,000 goal.
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