An Abergavenny woman escaped certain death after a forty-foot tree crashed to the ground, missing her small Suzuki Wagon by metres.

Andrea Letton had spent a Thursday afternoon shopping in Cwmbran when she decided to head back along Pengam Lane.

Ms Letton, who is retired, explains, “I was driving back from Goytre, and went past the Chainbridge motors into Pengam Lane, which links up to the B4598.

“Halfway down Pengam Lane I looked toward my left and saw this huge tree shaking in the wind.”

The mother of two said she was driving slowly in her Suzuki Wagon whilst singing along to the radio. Crucially, she said, she was driving slowly.

“I looked to my left. Then I thought why is that tree shaking? It was like somebody had grabbed hold of it and was shaking it back and forth. There was no wind. All the branches and leaves were shaking violently.”

Ms. Letton said she slowed down slightly before a sharp crack pierced the air.

“As I slowed down to look, it came crashing down in front of me. I was barely 20 yards from it.”

Driving in her Suzuki Wagon, Ms. Letton knew the fallen tree would have totally destroyed her car, with her trapped inside.

“I was two seconds away from being killed. I would have been completely squashed. The trunk alone was at least 6ft wide.”

The incident, on Thursday August 16, happened along Pengam Lane, which connects to Llanfair Kilgeddin via the B4598.

As she screeched to a halt, Ms. Letton realised she was just a few feet away from certain death.

“It was a massive crash. It really shocked me.” she said.

“A van pulled up behind me. The driver said ‘Oh my God! What happened there?’ He was literally a few yards behind me as it came crashing down,”?she said.

“The terror came afterwards, when I realised, I could have been under it.

“If I had been going four or five miles an hour faster — I was barely twenty yards from it — I would have been squashed.”

After turning her car around and moving away from the scene, Ms. Letton rang Gwent Police who turned up rapidly to close off the road.

“I turned around and went back the other way. And when I went back later, and the road was still closed. The road was closed about two and a half hours by that point.

“When I went back later to see if the road was still closed, the police were still there. They said it would take another two hours — at least — to shift the tree,” she said.

Police teams worked to remove the fallen tree. As the trunk was too big, diggers had to be drafted in to take the trunk away as chainsaw teams couldn’t cut through it.

Gwent Police closed the road for about six hours as the trunk was sectioned into pieces and hauled off.

Ms. Letton said that it was when she was later talking to her son and daughter that the reality of the near-miss dawned.

“About an hour later, the shock set in. I thought, ‘my God’, if I had been rushing to get home I’d have been under that tree as it fell. I realised after how lucky I was not to be underneath it. I’ve never seen something like that. I am incredibly lucky to be alive.”

Since the incident, Ms. Letton has been wary of driving under trees but appreciates being ‘so lucky’ given the reality of just how close she was to being directly under the falling tree.

“My children were amazed that I was still here. They were grateful that nothing terrible had happened. It came down with such a crash.”