Sarah Bond

Sarah's memory of that day is a series of snapshots.

One moment, the tree is swaying in the wind.

The next moment, the tree is crashing down onto their house, right on top of where the girls had gone looking for the cats.

Sarah turns to the bedroom, where she sees that the tree has cut through like an axe.

It's landed directly on the closet, the closet where the cats like to hide.

It's a pile of splintered wood now.

Sarah is imagining the worst.

But then she hears her husband Joel call out from the other side of the room.

Joel is frantically looking her over.

Sarah says she had never been so scared and so relieved.

Jojo was OK.

Okay, well, not quite.

You see, one of the cats, Binks, is missing.

Also, when Sarah calls the city to tell them, hey, this tree that I told you was going to fall on my house literally just fell on my house, they respond with something that takes her by surprise.

This is the moment that sends Sarah over the edge.

She and her family are now suing the city of Portland, not to challenge the constitutionality of its tree law, but just to get compensated for everything that they went through.

Now, we did reach out to the city, and they declined to comment because the lawsuit is still going on.

But the city has recently lowered some of its tree permit fees, and it's now in the process of rewriting its tree protection laws.

Sarah still has a hard time getting over what happened.

She says it would be one thing if all of this had just been a freak accident.