A woman and her daughter escaped virtually unscathed after a tree fell and crushed a car as they travelled through Devonshire on Saturday afternoon.

The churchyard tree gave way at the moment the silver-coloured Hyundai car was passing along Middle Road and smashed into the windscreen and roof.

The sheer weight of the old tree was enough to bring the car to an immediate halt and flatten the back tyres.

Driver Lynn Furtado and front seat passenger, 15-year-old daughter Alex, instinctively threw themselves to the left as the tree that had stood in the grounds of the Old Devonshire Church toppled onto the car.

They found themselves squashed with the collapsed roof of the car only a centimetre above their heads.

Somehow the pair escaped serious harm with almost identical injuries to one finger ? Lynn needed five stitches to a cut on one of her little fingers, while daughter Alex broke the tip of one of her little fingers.

Help was quickly at hand and the mum and daughter were pulled free from the car through a back window by four unknown rescuers before the emergency services arrived.

?I was taking Alex to dancing class and we were driving along and I noticed a flicker of movement from the tree out of the corner of my eye,? said Mrs. Furtado, 41, from St. George?s.

?It was like a little tremor in the branch. Alex and I threw ourselves sideways to the left and when I looked up the roof of the car was one centimetre above my head and there were branches everywhere.?

Mrs. Furtado had to put her hand under the trunk of the fallen tree to reach the ignition key and switch off the engine, and then put her arm over the top of the tree to release her seatbelt.

?There were people there right away,? she said. Four men pulled us out when they realised we were not badly hurt.?

She said Canon James Francis was also at the scene immediately offering help.

The tree was eventually sawn up by Island Construction workers and removed using a mobile crane. The accident happened on Middle Road between the junctions of Brighton Hill Road and Christ Church Road around 3.45 p.m.

Mrs. Furtado said: ?We were held in the hands of God. It was like there was a bubble around us. I would like to know the names of the people who helped us out of the car. It has restored my faith in Bermudians.?

The reason why the tree fell is a mystery. Some onlookers at the scene mentioned that the tree had been clipped by a truck the previous day, which may have weakened it.

For Mrs. Furtado, it is her second close encounter with a falling tree. At the age of 16 the student house where she was staying in Canada was hit by a falling pine tree that crashed onto her bunk-bed ? fortunately she was not in the house at the time.