Trees Down
Ye gads, there’s trees down all over the city. Big trees. Huge trees. In the great Frederick Law Olmsted-designed stretch of Ponce de Leon running through Druid Hills alone I’ve spied three large trunks laid out like sunbathers on the lawn. Two of them have dropped, uprooted, side-by-side like doomed lovers and another has crashed through a fence like a shootist in a Sam Peckinpah picture. Over here in Midtown, somewhere between Piedmont and Monroe, there’s this yellow-orange van that’s been smashed into the shape of a cradle for some carted-off tree corpse. Yow.
I’m sure you’ve seen some of these around. I imagine this is caused by the softening earth, which is itself caused by the ridiculous amount of rain that’s fallen this summer. Atlanta’s such a terrifically green city, though, so what do the powers that be do when something like this happens? Is it true that Atlanta has one of those laws that says “If one tree comes down another one must go up,” or not? Is it normal for the city to suffer this many arboreal casualties in a single summer?
I believe that much like the rain we have had an abmormal amount of tree fallings. (btw – my tree expertese goes as far as planting them as a volunteer for Trees Atlanta).
In my opinion there are at least reasons for this
1) aging tree population
2) large amount of concentrated rain
3) very high winds
There is a law on the books for tree replacement, but I believe it only pertains to cutting of trees, not those taken out by Mother Nature.
We had a large tree limb fall in the backyard, I think it was a combination of age and water. However, across the street an entire tree fell into a power line. The worst situation in my neighborhood (Drew Valley) is a tree which crashed into a home and split it open.