March 3, 2018
In the nor’easter, falling trees kill children inside their houses.
The Daily Beast tells of "an 11-year-old boy killed in New York City when a tree fell on his home, and a 6-year-old crushed by a falling tree while he was sleeping in his bed in Chester, Virginia."
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Russian olive trees, smuggled in by Trump's unhygienic minions.
I'm sure there is some new law which can prevent this in the future.
Inspect the trees around your house. Know if there's any tree that could fall and injure people in the house. How big would such a tree need to be?! We have some big trees around the house, and we have them inspected and trimmed pretty often, but I have never thought that there was anything that could injure us when we are inside the house. I've always thought of getting hit by a tree only as a freak accident that could occur when you're outside. You're inside, often in the same place (bed). So if there's a potentially dangerous tree in a position where it would kill you in your bed, you ought to know and do something about that.
Sen. Feinstein's forthcoming bill defines an "assault tree" as a tree at least 20 feet in height, equipped with detachable leaves and one or more of the following features: acorns, ridged bark, or those little military-style helicopter seeds.
It's heartbreaking, but I get sick of the media's focus on East Coast weather, just because they are there. The south can flood and the midwest can have windstorms and it doesn't lead the national news.
What MayBee said. Meanwhile, I read a report this morning that just one storm has put a serious dent in the media's hoped for California drought this coming summer. 7 feet of snow in the Sierras.
CA wildfires and Midwest tornadoes get lots of coverage.
Here in Oak Ridge, there are definitely some killer sized trees that have grown up in the last 75 years. Not a year goes by that a tree doesn't fall an hit a house in just the mile radius of where I live now. I have photographs of the neighborhoods from the 1950s and 60s, it looked so different then even though it is basically all the same houses.
We need to regulate assault trees.
Those are the ones with more than six branches.
Something that a homeowner can do is periodically have a qualified arborist thin out the canopy so that there's less for the wind to catch. That helped us prolong the life of our Bradford pear at our old house, though eventually it blew over like every other Bradford pear planted by our developer (though it was the last one standing in the development to the best of my knowledge). Could Meade weigh in on this?
Mother Nature can be a bitch. Here in Placitas, we have bob cats, coyote and the occasional mountain lion. Two winters ago I lost all my Koi that came with the small pond in my patio. I replaced them with cheap goldfish from Walmart. Lat week when I got home from work, a bobcat crossed my driveway 30 feet away from me. He was not concerned about me. I went in to check on the dog - she was on the patio, nose up, smelling, but safe. If the bobcat got her, I'd feel bad, but... I worry about a big old barn owl that is in the area too. But they were here first. I see some areas near by and am happy I am not there - a fire with the right conditions will burn the neighborhoods to the ground and has the potential to kill a lot of people. And that was one of the reasons I'm here and not there. Be aware and take precautions, but live your life.
It's time for some common sense topiary.
And that boy in “New York City” was actually in Putnam County, some 50 miles outside the city. The Daily Beast story didn’t sound right. Not that it’s any less tragic, but things like that are much more likely to happen in the burbs or exurbs.
That carbon was completely harmless when it was in the atmosphere as CO2. Let it be extracted and it kills children.
They changed the power company to just a distribution company purchasing power from the market, which resulted in them starting huge tree trimming operations and no power outages for a couple years at a time, where it used to be monthly.
You get to choose where they purchase your power so there's huge amounts of junk mail, though.
Do you know that according to Aristotle a person who dies crushed by a column does not die a tragic death? And yet here is that nontragic death hanging over you.
link.
Ann says "if there's a potentially dangerous tree in a position where it would kill you in your bed, you ought to know and do something about that." What, take personal responsibility for my own safety? Shouldn't it be the Government's responsibility to keep me safe? And what about those people who can't afford to cut down dangerous trees? Shouldn't the Government at the very least subsidize them? Sure, let the poor and ignorant die, while the elite sleep soundly in their tree-safe beds.
I read a report this morning that just one storm has put a serious dent in the media's hoped for California drought this coming summer. 7 feet of snow in the Sierras.
Jerry Brown and the So Cal Libtards hardest hit. There go their dreams of putting permanent draconian water restrictions on everyone (except themselves) and their plans to grab control of the water from Northern California where we do NOT have a water shortage and where the water is being re-routed to the gaping maws of LA and other urban areas.
We have several large trees that need to be trimmed or removed pretty soon. I hate to totally remove one of the trees as it provides great shade from the sun on the west side of the house (an 60 ft Cedar).
Last spring we cut back, removed about 60 feet from the top of a couple of trees that had gotten too tall and were in danger of limbs breaking off from heavy winds. I don't mind them being scalped as they are Cottonwoods which are indestructible and create snowdrifts of white fluff every summer. Good!
If you don't take care of those trees, they will put your house in danger from limbs, trees falling and invasive roots damaging your foundations.
A similar storm has hit the UK, 'The Beast from the East' they call it. The Telegraph reports that train passengers have Mutinied ( Mutiny is the word the Telegraph used ) by hopping out of stalled trains onto the tracks. All I could think of was a scene out of a Pirate Movie, of eye-patched mutineers with cutlasses drawn.
Talked to my bro' in Brooklyn - a lifelong environmentalist who does impact statements all over the world. He said it was sunny but cold in NYC today. I asked "well, what about this big 'bomb cyclone' nor'easter you all were facing?" He said, "Yeah, it was a rain storm."
It's been windy here, but it's down to a mere 20-25. We had 40 sustained with gusts to 60. Lots of debris down, but very few trees (none of ours, fortunately). I saw one house speared by a falling limb. Power failures all around, but only a couple of flickers at our house. The tide was 2 feet lower than it should be, and my boat was sitting in the mud at the bottom of the slip.
Anticipating an active 2005 hurricane season in New Orleans, we hired professionals to remove two aging pine trees outside our bedroom. Unfortunately the first branch sawed off crashed right through the bedroom window scattering glass everywhere. Fortunately no one was in the room at the time.
We left the healthy magnolia tree outside the living room standing. Katrina wind/lightening hit the magnolia and split it in half and yes, one half crashed into the roof.
Lesson learned: never plant potentially huge TREES too close to your house.
The Killer Trees
(Jump to @0:40)
Tremendous skiing today, per reports, up in the Sierra.
Good; it was shaping up to be a particularly bad drought season.
There should be racks of cutlasses in each BART train car.
It would improve the mood tremendously.
We are surrounded by trees. Hemlocks, cedars and doug firs hundreds of years old. Any one of them - depending upon the wind direction - could fall on the house and kill us on the spot.
It's part of living here in the PNW.
Hemlocks are the ones to watch out for since they tend to rot from the center out. The rest? Well, if it's my time, it's my time.
Shame & defund the Arbor Day Foundation now! They openly and brazenly lobby for more death dealing trees! Think of the children!
Oh that happened around the corner from me this winter. An oak fell on this guy's bedroom while he was sleeping. They still haven't torn the house down but it's sideway. terrible
Better to whack them trees off at the stump now, before any more innocent children are killed. Consider: there is no Constitutional provision protecting the ownership of trees.
My neighbors, a few houses down, just missed tragedy. The top room on the left of the photo is where their infant sleeps. The tree fell at 7:30AM on Friday, & my wife said that as she looked out the window to see where the tree fell, she saw a huge cloud of dust. We both ran down to see if the neighbors were okay, as did some other neighbors. The husband appeared at the door, & said everyone was alright. The FD came & cordoned off the house, & later a work team came to saw off the protruding branches. Luckily, the family has relatives local to stay with for while, but they're in for months of repairs & insurance aggravation.
I'm surrounded by yuuuge trees, "house bisectors" I call them. I had two taken down last summer, but those two threatened the neighbors more than my house. When it gets really stormy & windy, me & the Mrs sleep downstairs to put as much house between us & a falling tree trunk as possible.
Just one more reason why my ol'lady wears a helmet to bed.
Very scary, Young Hegelian. I'm glad you are all ok.
That must be some mighty strange cottonwoods you have there, DBQ!
My grandmother had her pecan trees topped in the 80's hoping they'd produce more pecans. Fifteen years later, an ice storm took out the top third of them where they'd regrown. The trees on my lot next door were older (~100 years) but didn't lose a large branch.
Bradford pears are notoriously brittle. A nursing home near me has one inside its U shape that is yuge.
Bag, padded headboards.
Hurricane Donna put a large oak on our house in Norfolk right after we moved in and 2 months before I was born. My dad was at sea (the Navy leaves port in a storm)(he was on a longer cruise when I was born), and my siblings were not quite 2 and 4. The neighbor came over and got our house fixed before his own.
Maybe just don’t sleep upstairs near big old trees if there are 60mph winds?
We have a massive maple in the backyard, in proximity to my bedroom-it was last topped in 1979 and needs it again, but funds just won't permit it. A few years back we had a huge windstorm here in Kentucky and I was so certain that tree would hit us I kept us all in the front of the house. We were awoken in the middle of the night by a deep, thundering crack and boom. The maple had not hit the house. It came through fine. The antique apple in the ditch behind the back fence, however... was not. Next morning we went outside to find the apple UPSIDE DOWN inside the fence, resting on its branches, with its rootball up in the air, ten or twelve foot in diameter. As if God were weeding and went, "Hmm, this has got to go" and ripped it up roots and all and tossed it over the fence. I hadn't expected the younger, healthier, more normal-sized tree to be a problem. The peach tree right next too it and the apple farther down the ditch were unharmed, as well. But in happy news,we chopped up the wood,put it in the deep hole the tree had left in the ditch, and capped the hole with a large section of trunk. Several years later, the new tree that had sprouted from the stump was bearing apples.
That must be some mighty strange cottonwoods you have there, DBQ!
Not Cottonwoods? Whatever they are they put out a shit-ton of white fluff in the spring. The crud piles up in what looks like snowbanks. It looks like we are living in a snow globe for about a month.
The only way to get rid of the crud is to soak it with a sprayer hose and try to shovel it into bags. I hate those trees and would like to get rid of ALL of them, not just the one or two near the house...however, they ARE holding together the steep bank behind out house that goes down to the river with their invasive roots. /sigh.
"Yeah American are tired, Ann. They're tired of Drama Queen Trump and his apologists, like you."
When I lived in the mountains, a huge tree fell but away from the house. IT was about 80 feet tall.
The guy next door had built a house that diverted the local spring and that us what undermined my tree. Ww were very lucky.
The fallen tree can be seen in this post about the house.
I hired the guy next door to cut it up and stack it for firewood.
A neighbor's house in Winnetka was actually cut in half by a falling tree in a storm. The tree missed the people but it was a hell of a wake up call.
When Ike continued north in 2008 there were 3 fatalities from tree falls in Cincinnati
Nobody Died in Boston. In fact: Many of us didn't even not have power Why didn't you hear about it? Because we aren't Bitches...Even though previous urban planning schemes put in a nasty lot of Bradford Pears.
Hurricane Sandy’s brush past the Washington area took down our lovely Bradford pear and it missed the corner of the house by inches. A tree removal crew came by the next day y and I paid them to chop it up, mulch the smaller branches, and grub out the stump. Took them an hour or two, and they probably seasoned what was left of the trunk and largest branches and sold it for firewood a few months later. I don’t begrudge them their profits. It was hard work and they had invested in tools and a large scale chipper.
Unfortunately our HOA had gotten pretty nit-picky by then and was insisting that everyone who lost a tree had to replace like with like, but we were not up for replacing it with another brittle Bradford. In the end we put in a Cleveland pear, which is nearly as showy but not as fast-growing and supposedly not as prone to being blown over. A neighbor who lost her Bradford pear a couple years before was smart. She had the stump cut off even with the ground and let the stump produce suckers. She picked the strongest sucker to encourage and eventually she had another Bradford pear, of sorts. More like a bush.
As someone once said: nature is trying to kill you 24/7.
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