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High Winds Topple Pine Tree, Two Cars Totaled

Santa Ana winds pushed the tree over and on to the cars early Sunday morning.

Heavy winds overnight were credited with uprooting a large, old pine tree in Santa Monica and causing it to fall on three parked cars, likely totaling two of them, a police sergeant said Sunday.

The cars were parked in the 900 block of 11th Street when the tree fell just after midnight, said Santa Monica police Sgt. Ryan Gradle.

"It was really, really windy,'' Gradle said. "The whole root structure
came out of the ground.''

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The large, older pine tree was about 75 to 100 feet long, with a base six feet in diameter, he said. It fell over a Volkswagen, another sedan and a Toyota Prius.

The VW was in front and completely crushed and I couldn't see what the second car was,'' Gradle said. "The Prius was just hit on the side.''

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The calls started coming in after midnight from people who heard the tree fall and the people whose cars it fell on, he said.

An officer wrote a ``Traffic Miscellaneous'' report for the destroyed or damaged cars so the owners could contact their insurance companies, Gradle said.

No one was hurt, but he said that could have been different a couple of hours earlier when people were coming home from dinner or a couple of hours later after bars closed.

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