heard anything quite like the sound that occurred Monday when a 60-foot sycamore tree came crashing down across the front lawn of her home off Oakland Avenue Monday.
    “All of a sudden I heard this loud boom,” Gay said Wednesday.
   Gay hired an independent tree serviceman to remove the tree. Gay said instead of removing the tree one piece at a time, he opted to lash a rope on the tree and his truck and bring it down at all once.
    In the process the tree broke a six-inch water line causing it to gush freely. Gay said she called the Helena-West Helena Water Department to deal with the rupture.
   Jeff Patterson, a water department employee, said Wednesday the crew shut off the line and replaced the broken section.
  “We spent about eight hours getting the water line repaired,” Patterson said. As a result, several residents along Terrace Drive and Woodland Drive were without water for most of the day Monday.
 Patterson said while storms often cause trees to fall this incident was something “that shouldn’t have happened.”
    Gay said she hired the tree serviceman to remove the tree because of termite damage.
    “A part of the tree got burned somehow years ago and termites damaged it,” Gay said. “I thought at some point it might fall on my house.”
    One of the area residents, Charles Powell, said he was just returning to Helena after a trip to Louisiana and to his surprise his water was off at the house.
  “I saw that big tree. It really dug a hole,” Powell said. His water was restored by nighttime. Powell experienced his own woes last summer when a tornado swept across the south part of Phillips County and riddled his dwelling at the Jackson Point Hunting Club along with several other property owners.