That pine tree that came dangerously close to taking a man’s life at Lions Park on Monday? It had been earmarked by the city’s parks and recreation department for removal.
“The root system on the north side of the tree was showing it uprooting a tiny bit,” said Tom Cressman, Bremerton parks maintenance manager.
Parks staff, in consultation with Puget Sound Energy municipal liaison and city tree committee member Tom Brobst, made the call April 29.
“It was not an immediate threat to anything, so we thought we had some time to remove it,” Cressman said.
Parks staff, which has been busy with not only maintenance but the construction of a new park in Anderson Cove, didn’t get to it before Monday, when it collapsed. Paul Oakes, there to umpire a game, got a warning from one of the trees pinecones hitting him on the shoulder before the 40-foot tree fell. He escaped by inches. His Cadillac wasn’t so lucky.
Brobst told parks staff that two neighboring pine trees should also come down. So on Tuesday, parks staff took down the two other pines while they cleaned up the first one that fell.
“So we should be good there in that area,” Cressman said.
Thank you for following up and “digging” a bit deeper. It seemed odd that this tree should uproot especially with our dry weather and the soil hardened. I have always associated the heavily wetted soil as being more conducive to trees being uprooted as the soil is easier to turn.
The rush to complete the Anderson Cove project in time for an already published and tightly time lined ribbon cutting ceremony, skewed operational priorities to the point that a gamble was made. A gamble that did not pay off and basically cost this man his car and the city risk management time and money.
Time to re-evaluate priorities.
So why did this tree fall? Looking at the stump it looks like the tree was around 45 years old and the trunk at the cut looked in good health. The roots look like they had been damaged on the north side (side away from the fall). Had there been damage done to the root system?
Two other trees had been removed. One had quite a bit of rot in the trunk but the other did not look like it had a problem.