Boulder Creek family of boy struck by fallen redwood recalls horrifying night, gives thanks to all who helped

Howling winds already had knocked out the power and Catherine Smith was preparing a chicken alfredo dinner by flashlight Tuesday evening while her 2-year-old son Milo scampered about with his own light in their Boulder Creek home nestled among towering redwood trees.

Then, amid the din from falling branches that the family had come to expect during storms, a horrible, crashing sound startled her.

“I heard shatters, like things falling off of cabinets,” Catherine said in the family’s first interview about their ordeal from Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where Milo remains hospitalized. “I knew something was wrong.”

Her 3-month-old son, Booker, started crying and she rushed to his room.

“I realized I couldn’t hear Milo,” she said. “I was going all over the house looking for him, screaming for him. I went out into the living room and saw a tree in the living room. That’s when I started to panic.”

In their darkened home, a massive, 12-inch-thick redwood log had pierced through the roof and floor. She looked behind the couch, then began pulling away ceiling debris piled on the floor. Milo was underneath, his little leg and hip pinned by the tree. He was unconscious.

She yelled for help, and friends and neighbors rushed to their aid and called 911. Her husband, Zachary Smith, who’d left his facilities maintenance job early that day so he could be with his family through the storm, had made a quick trip into town and returned to find downed power lines in their street and a 100-foot redwood lying across the road and hovering over their house.

Catherine was outside their shattered home with their younger son, crying, and Zachary rushed into their house where a paramedic coached him to help keep Milo, who was fading in and out of consciousness, alert.

“I go and hold him in my arms, grab a blanket and rock him to keep him awake,” he said. “I was saying, ‘Milo, you’re OK buddy.’ I was scared and nervous.”

Boulder Creek Fire Chief Mark Bingham said his crews have gained lots of experience dealing with trees and limbs falling into homes and buildings during storms — they had half a dozen other reports just this week. But the log that had pinned Milo posed a particularly technical challenge.

It appeared the top of the tree had sheared off and plunged through the Smiths’ roof and living room floor. They had to relieve the log’s weight from Milo and the roof while keeping the roof from caving in. They needed special extraction equipment to clear shattered floorboards to free the boy. The effort took about 40 minutes, with Milo at times screaming in pain.

Then they needed to get the critically injured boy to a hospital — fast. But winds gusting more than 40 mph kept helicopter air ambulances grounded, Bingham said. So firefighters, paramedics and sheriff’s deputies escorted him by road, first to Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, the nearest, and then to Valley Med in San Jose, with one of the region’s highest-level trauma centers.

Once there, Milo’s condition stabilized overnight. But whether the boy — with a taste for any kind of cheese and music and a fondness for watching The Octonauts and Mighty Express — will fully recover remains uncertain.

“He’s going to live,” Zachary Smith said. “He has few more surgeries to go through. He’s going to be in the ICU a few weeks. It’s going to be a bit of a road to recovery.”

The Smiths know Milo’s survival is a blessing. Powerful winter storms this year already have claimed at least 21 lives, including one other child. Two-year-old Aeon Tocchini was crushed when a redwood fell on his family’s Sonoma County home Jan. 4. And search efforts continue for 5-year-old Kyle Doan, swept away by floodwaters five days later in San Miguel.

While the Red Cross has helped the Smith family with shelter, friends set up a gofundme account to help them with clothes, toys, and basic household items as well as diapers, blankets, baby food, pajamas and other necessities.

The Smiths are well aware of the Santa Cruz Mountains’ occasional hazards — shortly after they moved to Boulder Creek in 2020, the CZU Lighting Complex fires forced them to evacuate. But they fell in love with the community and are overwhelmed with gratitude for the outpouring of help and support from neighbors, first-responders and doctors who they credit with saving Milo.

“If everybody wasn’t doing their job,” Zachary said, “I don’t know if he’d be alive or not.”

And Catherine is hopeful they’ll be home before long with their “very spirited, stubborn, crazy little boy.”

“He’s strong,” she said. “He’s a fighter.”