Linda and Tom Cook were driving down a Seattle street on Friday when dozens of power lines and a wooden public utility pole collapsed on their SUV. The couple managed to escape their crushed SUV with the help of firefighters and say they’re lucky to be alive.

In an interview with KOMO-TV, Tom Cook said the crash could have had a tragic ending if the pole had fallen a different way. “If it had hit the glass rather than the roof, it would have just come through,” said Cook. “And the firefighters said the same thing, had it hit to the left or the right, it would have come down on one of us.”

Live wires lay in the road, making the area hazardous for other drivers and emergency crews and it took emergency crews close to an hour to turn off the power lines and safely extract the couple from their SUV. The Cooks were then taken to a nearby medical center where Tom was given five stitches. They were cleared to go home with minor injuries.

But looking at the photos of the crash, you wouldn’t think anyone in the car had survived, said Tom.

“Seeing the photos of the vehicle, if I had seen those photos as a bystander or after the fact and I looked at the photos, I would have said somebody died in the car,” said Cook.

Seattle City Light said that while the poles had been inspected in the last three years, the company is investigating what went wrong.