WHEW!

Talk about "close calls!"

Violent thunderstorms yesterday "broke the heatwave" that we were having here in Northern Virginia, but with tragic consequences for two people who were killed by falling trees.

Our 5 grandchildren avoided certain tragedy by minutes and my daughter in law suffered only a minor head injury and a sprained wrist and ankle when a very large tree fell across their backyard.

We were celebrating Jason Shephard's 10th birthday and were about to sit down for lunch. The children had just come inside from playing baseball in the back yard and were washing up when Jason's mom, Cindy, noticed that one of the boys had left a baseball glove in the yard. As she went to retrieve it from the approaching storm, a sudden and fierce wind caused a very large tree to be uprooted and fall only a few feet away. Luckily, she was struck by only a few of the smaller branches.

In spite of a huge lump on her head and a badly sprained wrist and ankle, the CT scan and X rays showed no other damage. -Ed