Sandy’s zombtrees are still poised to strike!
Nearly two years after Hurricane Sandy, trees damaged by its salty storm surge still loom over Sheepshead Bay.
The Parks Department said it would deal with the dead and ailing trees by the end of the summer. But the autumnal air is a chilling reminder of the abominable arbors still terrorizing the neighborhood, and one local said these untreated trees will injure pedestrians when — not if — their branches fall.
“It is the dead ones with the huge limbs that are going to crack off on someone that really worry me,” said Tom Paolillo, a board member of the Sheepshead Bay-Plumb Beach Civic Association. “What if a woman is walking by with a baby carriage?”
A spokeswoman for the department said tree inspections for the area should be finished soon, and tree removal will continue on an ongoing basis until July 2015. She said 48,000 trees were surveyed around the city and removal is based on trees’ overall state, not just dead limbs.
“We have been monitoring trees with low-percent leaf-out and observed their behavior throughout the growing season,” said Parks spokeswoman Meghan Lalor. “We only remove trees that are dead, structurally unsound, or in such severe decline that they are not likely to recover. Dead limbs do not always indicate that the whole tree is dead.”
But Paolillo said many of the neighborhood’s trees are still deadly, even if they aren’t dead. After every storm or strong gust of wind, he said his car has new dents from his tree’s falling limbs.
“My car has quite a few dents,” he said. “The condition of the tree in front of my house is pretty much the condition of 60 to 70 percent of the trees.”
Paolillo said the Parks Department denied his request to remove the tree, which routinely loses limbs, because it still has some green leaves. He said since the department still hasn’t removed the area’s dead trees, he doesn’t know when they’ll get around to tackling the undead-yet-deadly trees. He said the policy needs to change.
“They say it is not dead because it has a few leaves on it — meanwhile, there’s still quite a few dead branches,” he said. “Even if the dying tree is on its last breath, they wouldn’t take it down.”
