Boulder crashes through Chiloquin home with residents inside

January 10, 2013

A refrigerator-sized boulder crashed through a manufactured home Tuesday, leaving a Klamath County family with a gaping hole in their wall and a giant rock in their living room.

Corey and Jeanine Wells, their adult son, Corey, Jr., and his pregnant fiancee were all in the home, located on Highway 97 near the intersection with Modoc Point Road, around 3 p.m. Tuesday when Jeanine looked out the window to see one of their horses bolt.

“He flattened his ears, stuck out his tail and took off,” she said. “That’s when I looked up the hill and saw it coming for the house.”

Jeanine yelled for her husband and stood up, flattening herself against the kitchen counter behind her as a rock measuring about six feet long, five feet wide and five feet tall tore through the east wall of the home, inches from where she was standing.

“To me, it sounded like a freight train coming through,” she said. “It was a really scary, really sinking, feeling.”

Corey, Sr. saw the boulder when Jeanine yelled for him.

“I stood up and covered my face with my arm,” he said. “It just sounded phenomenal when it hit my house.”

No one was seriously injured, but the house is likely destroyed, said Corey, Sr.

The rock demolished the wall separating the dining room from a bedroom, a bedroom Corey, Jr. and his fiancee, Olivia Knothe, had just moved out of the week before.

“They would have been sleeping in a bed with their heads right up against that wall,” Jeanine said. “They wouldn’t have made it.”

The Wells have lived on this 30-acre parcel of land at the base of a steep incline on the east side of Highway 97 for over a decade, and they’ve never had something like this happen, Jeanine said.

“When we moved in here my fear was rattlesnakes, not giant rocks,” she said. “What are you supposed to do? Stop living? You can’t know something like this is going to happen.”

Both Jeanine and Corey, Sr. said they’re “spooked” and are afraid it could happen again. Corey, Sr. said he’ll likely build a retaining wall behind the house.

“I was watching the hill all night in the dark,” Jeanine said. “This is my dream. It’s destroyed.”

A representative from State Farm Insurance was coming to their home Wednesday to assess the damage. Jeanine said their representative, Jeff Young, was unsure if insurance would cover their loss.

“They said they don’t cover ‘earth movement,’ whatever that is,” she said. “They have to decide whether it was earth movement or an ‘act of God.’ ”

The family said though they’re in shock and saddened by the destruction to the family home, they feel lucky to be alive.

“I’ll tell you what’s an act of God,” Corey, Sr. said. “It’s an act of God we all made it.”

Jeanine suffered a small cut near her ankle and Corey, Sr. said his back is sore, but otherwise the family was unhurt. Even the two dogs, Zip and Jetta, made it through, though Jeanine said they couldn’t find Jetta for several hours and feared he’d been crushed by the boulder.

“This is very unfortunate, but we are very fortunate,” Corey, Sr. said.



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The rock demolished the wall separating the dining room from a bedroom, a bedroom Corey, Jr. and his fiancee, Olivia Knothe, had just moved out of the week before.

“They would have been sleeping in a bed with their heads right up against that wall,” Jeanine said. “They wouldn’t have made it.”

SAO PAULO (AP) — Police say enraged spectators invaded a football field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body after he stabbed a player to death.


The Public Safety Department of the state of Maranhao says in a statement that it all started when referee Otavio da Silva expelled player Josenir Abreu from a game last weekend. The two got into a fist fight, then Silva took out a knife and stabbed Abreu, who died on his way to the hospital.


The statement issued this week says Abreu's friends and relatives immediately "rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body."




Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field.