Storms are an act of god. Falling tree limbs may also be an act of god. What is not an act of god is ensuring that large, mature trees become unstable because you have hacked their root systems to pieces so that any breath of wind is likely to topple them over. That is not an act of god – especially when you have been warned that this could happen. That’s the story of the GESAC car park extension in Gardener’s Road. Council killed off one huge gum almost immediately; last week’s winds completed the job with the remaining 2 huge gums being downed.
Council should be mightily relieved that no-one was killed or injured and that cars just happened NOT to be parked directly under these massive trees. We’ve previously shown photos of the damage done to the roots. Here are the latest shots of the downed trees. Residents may well ask why trees are always second to concrete in Glen Eira and whether or not indifference, if not straight out negligence, ensured the demise of these particular trees.
Glen Eira Debates 
October 7, 2013 at 12:15 PM
Trees have been uprooted all over the place and plenty have been rotten inside. Council hasn’t looked after them but just left them to rot. That’s why so many have collapsed.
October 7, 2013 at 1:17 PM
I thought Council had a policy of inspecting trees every 2 years – I’m not an arborist but having seen the wind damaged trees even I could tell they were not healthy and the rot didn’t occur overnight.
Looks like tree inspections are yet another service that has been dispensed with.
October 7, 2013 at 2:46 PM
Most Councils have a preventative maintenance programme for trees but not Glen Eira. All works are done on a reactive basis.
October 7, 2013 at 6:32 PM
I’ve seen these trees and it’s a miracle that they survived this long. Concrete that’s about a foot deep was laid maybe 2 foot away from the trunk after all the major roots were cut. Three important trees are now gone and all that residents have got to show for it is a handful of stupid little samplings that will take at least 10 years to grow to half the height of these trees. You’d have to be a moron not to know this would happen.
October 7, 2013 at 10:25 PM
If they really and truly cared about trees then it wouldn’t take ten years to get a tree register or to protect what’s there. They don’t give a stuff.
October 8, 2013 at 8:07 AM
Looking at the size of the trees and the root mass I’d say Council’s sub contractors did an excellent job of removing any root that gave the trees stability or life – not one major root left intact. Council should be grateful that the wind event occurred overnight – as a result of the car park works these trees were going to die and topple, it was just a matter of when and if person would be injured.
Likewise, Council is also lucky that the two huge cypress trees in Glen Huntly Park, that were snapped in half (2 metres up the trunk, roots still firmly in the ground), fell during the same overnight wind event, These trees snapped because they were severely rotten in the centre – one of them lost a major limb during a similar wind event two years ago and obviously didn’t result in an inspection being carried out.
Council seems has forgotten about the need to inspect trees, except when it comes to rhetoric, and only mentions tree health when it comes to justifying their removal (usually for reasons not to do with tree health).