Nothin' Freaky About It...

You've all seen reports with downed trees that have hurt or killed someone, and the words "freak accident" and "act of God" usually fall out of someone's mouth during the report. Some of them are, but many of them are anything but. Trees are temporary, and they must be evaluated regularly if they have high value targets. Here's one I spotted last week in Olney, Illinois, right in front of an apartment building, with the grass worn down in front from heavy foot traffic. It is rotten from one end to the other.

This is a bad joint with included bark. It will break apart in a storm someday. The recommendation is to take it out now, while it is easy.

Here is another bad joint, enhanced by lightning damage and rot. This tree is big enough to do real damage to the house it is shading. The recommendation is to take it out ASAP.

This pin oak is in the news at Mt. Vernon, Illinois today. It's big, it's 90% dead, and it has topping damage from many years ago.

Being topped many years ago created this unnaturally shaped top, and introduced rot into the stem.

A huge limb was knocked down last night during a thunderstorm, and it killed the man who lived in this trailer. Mt. Vernon had only a couple limbs come down in the city park, no tree problems on public rights-of-way, but there were six trees on private land that fell into streets, and Public Works employees had to be called out to clean them up. The difference between the city properties and private land is that Mt. Vernon has been aggressive for over twenty years in monitoring the city trees, and removing every problem tree they find. Monitoring your trees is more important than most will ever realize. The poor guy renting this trailer never had a clue what was hanging over his head.

Check out WSIL TV 3's news report HERE.  (The link is dead, but they gave God and freak accidents the credit for this preventable disaster.)