POWHATAN COUNTY, Va. -- What started as a relaxing evening by the fire ended with friends Chris Johannsen and Chad Day leaping for their lives when a 40-foot tree came crashing down outside Johannsen's Powhatan County home.
Video of the close call was captured on Johannsen's home security camera.
Watch a portion of the video below
“I heard the sound, and that’s what cued me to look over," Johannsen said. "It sounded like a bear was coming through the woods it was so loud.”
“I had no idea what that sound was," Day added. "It was just loud and very all over the place.”
While the sound was the first clue something was wrong. It was not the only clue.
“I just see this white tarp lift right out of the ground, and it just hit me: this tree is falling," Johannsen said.
“For Chris to have looked up and seen that white tarp and know that was a root ball coming up is what basically, I want to say, saved our life." Day said.
The security video showed both men dove over a garden wall with Chad landing on Chris.
“You jumped right here, then I landed on you right here and kind of rolled over. Tuck and roll.”
“You get up and you’re like: did that really just happen?” Johannsen said.
While the friends were able to laugh, a little, about it on Tuesday, the moments immediately after Friday night's fall were best described as scary, then relieved, and then thankful.
The families had been setting up to roast s'mores and children were playing outside before the fall.
"The what ifs, what ifs, what ifs. If the wind was blowing, we wouldn’t have heard the roots cracking. If we were playing music, we wouldn’t have heard it. Had the kids been outside playing and being loud as kids do, we might not have heard it and all us got crushed," Johannsen said. “Just out of this world how delicate life is and the next day is not always guaranteed.”
“The fact that we get to hear [the kids'] voices again is enough for me," Day said. “I don’t know what everybody believes in and what their thoughts are on that, but somewhere, somebody was looking out for me and Chris. It just had to be perfectly executed for us to escape.”
"My dad said, ‘your mom’s looking out after you.’ So I truly think my mom was looking out after me," Johannsen said.
Johannsen said the tree that fell was alive and there was not a storm blowing through when it fell. Neither man knows yet what caused the tree to fall.
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