A Florida woman was crushed to death by a falling tree during Hurricane Isaias after it smashed through the roof of her Pensacola home, leaving her husband trapped and unable to reach his phone.
Jenn Biggs Williams, 57, was lying beside Joey, her husband of 10 years, when the tree came down on Saturday. Joey’s legs were crushed beneath the wreckage, while Williams was left unconscious and without a pulse.
After around 20 to 30 minutes, Joey managed to crawl free and use his Apple Watch to contact his son as the storm battered the area.
His son said his father sent a message despite the family having lost power. When asked how serious the damage was, Joey replied: “My wife is gone.”
Husband watched wife’s body taken away
Emergency crews later allowed Joey to say goodbye to Williams before her body was taken away.
“They let me say bye to her. I watched the love of my life for 10 years go into the back of a coroner’s van and head down that road. That’s the hardest thing I ever swallowed in my life,” he said.
In an interview with NewsNation, Joey described Williams’s death as “pretty instant”. He said she worked in human resources and was an “ultra-nice badass person” whom everybody loved.
“I just want to hear her voice. I’ve called her phone five times just to tell her … she was my world,” he said.
Williams’s stepson said he spent the following morning cutting down fallen trees while trying to process the loss.
“I’ve been dropping trees all morning, crying and carrying on,” he said. “And me, I’m just angry.”
Hurricane Isaias struck the Florida Panhandle near Destin at about 8.30pm as a Category Two storm, with maximum sustained winds of 105mph. Within half an hour, the winds had fallen to 85mph, but the storm continued to cause destruction along the Gulf Coast.
More than 418,000 homes and businesses in Florida and Alabama lost electricity, including about 300,000 customers in Florida. The storm left four people dead and others injured.
