BATON ROUGE - A woman is stuck with a totaled car and no help covering the damages after a rotting branch fell on her vehicle while driving by a BREC park. 

In late July, Avilenne Gil Hernandez was driving along Jefferson Highway next to BREC's Bayou Manchac park when a six-foot-long tree branch dropped from an oak tree above and smashed onto the hood of her car. 

"It was out of nowhere. I never saw anything fall from it except just this one random day that I'm driving," Hernandez said.

The damage to her car was extensive and the insurance company deemed it totaled. Despite walking away without injuries, Hernandez hoped the City-Parish or BREC would assume responsibility for the damages. 

"We cannot get insurance to do anything," she said. "The car, essentially the entire front of it, was completely totaled."

A closer look shows the road is maintained by DOTD -- not the City-Parish. A GIS mapping portal breaks down street ownership, helping to clarify what party has maintenance responsibilities.

Hernandez looked for legal counsel and came up empty-handed. Attorneys told her the case was unwinnable and the expectation of inspecting every tree in the city is an impossible task.

Now that attorneys, insurance companies and the city have turned her away without helping, she's looking to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to someone else. 

After the wreck, a woman with two children helped rescue her from the car. Now Hernandez says her greatest fear is that the same thing could happen to another driver along Jefferson Highway—this time leading to injuries.

"I just keep going back to the lady that was behind me that has two little girls," Hernandez said. "I would be really upset if something would have happened to her."

Hernandez says she hopes the incident will bring awareness, and in the future trees hanging over roads will be regularly maintained.