There has been another casualty in the long-fought battle between humans and trees.
A Sheepshead Bay woman was injured when a massive branch fell and hit her in the head while she was walking a dog in Manhattan Beach Park earlier this month.
“I heard a crack above me and the branch came down” said Tatyana Gubina. “I thought I was dead.”
The falling limb left Gubina with a large knot on her noggin.
“My head swelled up to three times its size,” she said.
After police arrived, they sent Gubina to Coney Island Hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with minor injuries and handed her a $3,000 bill. Gubina, who does not have health insurance, considered suing the city, but she couldn’t convince a lawyerto go out on a limb to take the case.
“Since I am not on a wheelchair and — thank God — can talk and walk, they won’t try my case,” she said.
She has filed a personal injury claim with the comptroller’s office, which compensates people for injuries or property damage cause by city-owned trees.
In the last five years, 14 people have filed claims with the city for injury as a result of falling tree limbs, according to the comptroller’s office. The highest number of claims was in 2013, when five people sought compensation. Since 2009, the city has doled out nearly $332,000 to claimants for tree-related injuries.
Gubina reached out to the Bay News after reading about Manhattan Beach residents’ struggle to get the city to address dangerous trees on their block.
Briny flood waters from Hurricane Sandy killed many trees across southern Brooklyn, which have since been attacking unsuspecting citizens with falling branches, creating a zombtree apocalypse that the city is still working to address.
The Parks Department is investigating Gubina’s incident, a spokeswoman said. The department did not respond to questions about when it last pruned the trees in Manhattan Beach or when the next zombtree cull is planned.
