A 63-year-old disabled Seffner woman is struggling to put her life back together after a tree fell on her mobile home during Friday's storms.
Family members said Helen VanHouten was sitting inside her mobile home when a rotten tree branch came tumbling down.
"When it came down she was sitting about two feet from it," said Melina Kieffer, VanHouten's daughter in law. "If she hadn't jumped at the sound of it cracking above, it probably would have hit her."
Neighbors quickly rushed to help.
"Oh she was extremely shaken up," said Tom Adam. "I mean the tree took the mobile home to the ground a few feet from where she was sitting. She could have easily been killed."
VanHouten's family members said they don't think much can be salvaged.
"The first words out of her mouth weren't, 'I'm alive,' but, 'I'm homeless' when this happened," said Kieffner. "It was heartbreaking to the entire family to hear that from her because that was her worst nightmare."
The family said VanHouten is also suffering from lung cancer.
"She's pretty down in the dumps," Kieffner said. "She's trying to stay spirited. We all told her that God was in her back pocket and that it's not her time to go."
She said VanHouten is staying with a relative but because the house is so damaged they can't get inside to get any of her things.
"So I mean she needs everything from the bottom up to re-establish herself so she can continue to fight the cancer and other illnesses," said Kieffer.
They call her "fiercely independent" and said the hardest thing is to see her independence taken away.
Kieffer has set up a GoFundMe account to try to help VanHouten find a place of her own to live and to replace her belongings.