"What happened is basically an act of God."

Around 7:00am Monday morning Princeton Fire and Police responded to an accident on Fitchburg Road (Route 31) in the Leominster State Forest area of town. A large pine tree fell onto a moving truck where three occupants suffered minor injuries. Princeton Fire Chief John Bennett spoke with Spectrum News 1 about the accident. "The wind took out a 24 inch, probably 100 foot pine and a truck with a crew was driving down the road pulling a roller and the tree literally came across the hood of the truck through the windshield and basically we had one person trapped. The truck was on fire, the driver actually self extricated out of the vehicle. And then we had an individual in the back seat. So three victims. One was basically what we would call walking wounded, he got class in his eyes.  All three were transported to UMass. Westminster Fire assisted with their ambulance and our ambulance and our engine and a Westminster engine."

Chief Bennett said the three occupants of the truck were fortunate. "Actually, very, very, very lucky. Everybody's going to be fine. They were all transported. They were all evaluated. This could have ended very differently. We thought there were life threatening injuries for the driver because of the amount of impact and the steering wheel was pushed all the way up into the windshield and there was actually a tree through the windshield. However, he got very lucky."