Big cedar drops limb onto play group!

[benedmonds]

I got a call out sunday night thaying that a branch had dropped onto my local playgroup and could I go and have a look. My wife is on the commitee and it's only a 5 min walk away so I grabbed a silky and headed up... It was a bit bigger then I thought...

 

Over the wall is the playground. It happened at 1620 on a sunday, sunny light winds, no obvious defects. Sunday school had been in the building in the morning.

 

Two other "tree surgeons" were also there, one with a pint in hand from local pub.. The church wardens said because we all had turned up we could all work together to clear it up! Me being precious about my H&S and one of the firms having a tracked MEWP decided that 3 teams was more then required so didn't do the clear up.

 

I am recommending fell and trying to get the cash strapped church to get the trunk carved into something. Any carvers interested pm me.

[John Hughes]

Where abouts is it?

Is it a cedar of lebanon ?

I may be interested in it to mill.

John

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

looks as though it was cabled, but unreduced?

[benedmonds]

looks as though it was cabled, but unreduced?

 

No cable, that's a rope holding it while they are removing it.

[Old Mill Tree Care]

Felled??!!

 

Oh my god! That looks like a mighty fine tree and unless there is something we can't see in the photo, how is felling justified?

It's quite common for this to happen after long dry periods. It almost always happens at about 4pm on a warm, quiet day after a long period of dry weather.

 

Trees are not like psychotic gun wielding mad men ie: likely to do it again.

Now that the limb has gone, it can't be dropped again.

You mention that there was no obvious defect, well that indicates the tree has pruned itself.

While I'm not one to turn away the opportunity of a big job like that, surely there is a better way? What about pruning to remove a bit of weight from the limbs. Sure, there will be regrowth but you won't get any grief or bad PR locally. Tip pruning a tree like that takes a long time so it will still line your pocket nicely.

[Big J]

Felled??!!

 

Oh my god!

 

I was thinking the same. Really quite a stunning tree - it would be a huge shame to fell it.

[blazer]

I work on a large estate with plenty of mature cedars mostly on parkland. Most have dropped boughs mainly in the summer and all are still standing as healthy trees.

 

This tree is on a dry bank so it could drop more boughs, higher boughs will often crash through damaging the whole of one side.

[Steve Bullman]

Felled??!!

 

Oh my god! That looks like a mighty fine tree and unless there is something we can't see in the photo, how is felling justified?

It's quite common for this to happen after long dry periods. It almost always happens at about 4pm on a warm, quiet day after a long period of dry weather.

 

Trees are not like psychotic gun wielding mad men ie: likely to do it again.

Now that the limb has gone, it can't be dropped again.

You mention that there was no obvious defect, well that indicates the tree has pruned itself.

While I'm not one to turn away the opportunity of a big job like that, surely there is a better way? What about pruning to remove a bit of weight from the limbs. Sure, there will be regrowth but you won't get any grief or bad PR locally. Tip pruning a tree like that takes a long time so it will still line your pocket nicely.

 

Would you perhaps feel differently if your children attended the playgroup there? I certainly would

[blazer]

Would you perhaps feel differently if your children attended the playgroup there? I certainly would

 

To me trees grow and later on fall down and are not too predictable in between, the whole image of a TPO takes a bit of understanding, with the balance of risk to people or the tree often biased towards the tree. I over heard our local council tree twit spouting on in the pub on how they are being more 'enviro friendly' stopping more tree work than a few years ago.

 

Between my wife and myself we have had say 10 incidents in the last few years of trees and boughs falling down near us when out walking, often on summer no wind days. about 10 yrs ago a large popular (with a tree tag on) fell across the Hospital playgroup smashing the front doorway but again it happened at night. We also had a large Beech again with tree tag with rotten roots fall across the school road into the entrance again at night. Also at my son's preschool (yrs ago)they had a large Beech with fungus sprouting, I asked the owners to get it down, when the tree guys checked it, they said it was too dangerous to climb and pulled it over into a field away from the house. That's x3 kiddy incidents within a mile of each other, each one could have killed say +10 kids at peak time - how many more are there right now at risk.

[Old Mill Tree Care]

@Steve bulman

I would be concerned if my children went there but I wouldn't necessarily be jumping to fell it.

Of course, I realise Benedmonds may have considered all options and found the only option to be a fell.

He hasn't stated this so I'm just expressing a train of thought.

 

It's proximity to a school is a serious concern. My kids go to a school with a huge and very dangerous Oak leaning over the car park. I've expressed my concerns, the school has taken advice from two (seriously sub-standard) tree surgeons and decided it's safe. Can of worms right there.

 

Anyway, sorry for digressing. I'm just interested in the amenity value versus the safety factor. This is the kind of issue we can all learn something from, hopefully, maybe.