‘Could’ve been a lot worse:’ Family safe after Alderman Park home crushed by tree from Helene winds

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The cleanup continues from Helene’s impact and for some in Jacksonville, they’ll have to rebuild.

For 26 years, Chris McClellan and his family have been living in an Alderman Park home. It’s made it through every storm, until now.

“This this is our living room,” he showed Action News Jax Ben Ryan. “I guess you could say took a brunt of the impact here...I don’t know what it’s going to take to fix all this, but it will be a massive job.”

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<

An oak tree in his yard snapped from Helene winds and crushed the middle of his Arlington home. Luckily, his family is okay as nobody was hurt.

“It’s very tough, it’s upsetting but we’ll be alright. We will have a place to stay so we’ll be alright,” he said.

The tree snapped and crushed the living room as well as his two sons’ rooms. He said it happened just after they got into bed around 11:30 at night.

“It was a cloud of dust, it was unbreathable,” he said. “We’ve never had anything land on the house, we’ve had limbs and branches, and stuff fall on the house but never anything that would cause this kind of damage you see in here.”

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]

The Jacksonville area saw Helene’s impacts. From trees on homes, power lines, light poles down and even lawns uprooted, JEA said roughly 140,000 people were without power at its peak.

As crews helped clean up the damage and cover McClellan’s home in tarps, he said they got lucky.

“Extremely thankful, it could’ve been a lot worse than what it turned out, it looks bad but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said.

Action News Jax asked an official for a timeline for when power will be back on for everyone in our area, they said they’re anticipating final restorations to continue through early next week.

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.