Albert Rozic stands in front of a massive white oak tree that was knocked down on his property along Whitestown Road in Connoquenessing Township during a storm last month.

CONNOQUENESSING TWP — When a tree falls in the forest it does make a sound. It can also cut off your electricity as residents along Whitestown Road found out last month when a monster oak tree split in half and toppled into a power pole.

Albert Rozic, 86, of 914 Whitestown Road, didn't hear the tree fall but his neighbors did when the huge white oak Rozic estimated to be 300 to 400 years old toppled in the night down the road from the farmhouse where Rozic has lived since he was 5.

The Spang & Co. retiree said, “It had withstood wind storms earlier. But one night about 10 o'clock, it went over. It was a great evening. It took the power lines down. The neighbors heard the noise.”

“It could have fallen in any direction, but it took out the power lines,” Rozic said.

“The night that it happened there was like a loud crack, but I thought it was lightning,” said Rozic's cousin through marriage Lauretta Hanchosky, 919 Whitestown Road. “Then our lights went out.”

Her daughter-in-law and neighbor Diane Hanchosky also heard the tree fall.

“Me and my daughter, we lost power from 10:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. My daughter thought there was a wreck,” said Diane Hanchosky who is married to Lauretta Hanchosky's son, Joe.

“I had just fallen asleep when my daughter came running and said, 'Did you hear that?'” Diane Hanchosky said.

A Penn Power spokesman said the falling tree had knocked over a nearby power pole interrupting power to 231 customers for more than six hours.

Rozic said the fallen tree had a diameter of 19 feet, six inches.

“The odd part of it is there's living wood on the diameter. It's pretty well rotted out in the middle. It's broken completely,” said Rozic.

That's normal, said Jake Scheib, a forester with the Bureau of Forestry of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.“The cambium, the outside edge, is the only part that is alive and actually growing,” said Scheib.“The inside is dead to begin with. It has functions, but it is no longer growing. After a 150 years, it begins to decay on the inside.”“I'm guessing that the structure just got too heavy for what was left that was still living,” he said.Scheib said, “It's very hard to age a tree based on size, but 200 to 250 years old would be a reasonable estimate. A white oak is going to be 250 to 350, that would be on the upper end, but they definitely can live that long.”Rozic said the tree grew on what used to be pasture on his family's 42-acre farm.The tree's fate will be to end up as firewood, according to Rozic.“The relatives can come over and help themselves,” he said. “Some of those limbs are as large as trees themselves. They can't be used as lumber because the strain on the limbs would cause the wood to warp.”

This white oak collapsed against a power pole and knocked out power to more than 200 peopled.