HAVERHILL — Perley Bailey had his eye on it since Saturday, when terrific wind gusts likely caused a rotted section of the giant tree to split.

The upper two-thirds of the tree were leaning more and more over the road in front of his home at 475 Kingsbury Ave.

To Bailey, 79, the 55-foot-tall red oak tree looked like it could come down at any minute, taking power lines with it and possibly landing on top of any vehicle passing by.

"Lucky it didn't," Bailey said yesterday after tree removal experts arrived to begin the work of cutting down the tree. "We had two or three like that here a few years ago. I called the power company to report it."

Around 9:45 a.m., police closed Kingsbury Avenue from Willow Avenue to the Boxford line so that workers with Davey Tree, the company National Grid hired to remove the threatening tree, could take it down.

Davey Tree employees Daniel Barczak and Fred Albano said it was a particularly difficult tree to take down because part of it was touching power lines and its upper limbs and branches were hovering over the road and touching trees on the opposite side.

"You've got thousands of pounds of heavy, dense red oak and it would have taken out three utility poles and the wires," Barczak said. "It could have killed somebody."

A National Grid spokeswoman said electrical service was turned off at about 11:30 a.m. and restored late in the afternoon. The interruption affected 44 homes.

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