My wife was nearly killed by a falling roadside tree in Branford.
In a recent opinion, Dianne Hoffman, et. al., criticized Department of Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto on his arguments for roadside tree management along Connecticut roadways. “DOT’s practice of clearcutting along roadways ignores the science showing the extraordinary benefits of trees and the harm removals cause,” Hoffman wrote.
Eucalitto wrote that “Safety and environmental sustainability are not in conflict. While we are strategically addressing unsafe trees, we are also planting smaller native and healthy trees, bushes, and shrubs that beautify the landscape.”
Around 3:30 p.m., Sept. 6, 2022, our 2010 Lexus was totaled as my wife drove south on Leetes Island Road in Branford. Jane escaped death and stepped out of the totaled car. If I’d been on the passenger side, I wouldn’t be writing this.
It is perhaps informative to begin a review the frequency of falling roadside tree accidents that have occurred in our area by simply Googling the subject. Using Google again, one can reveal that several tree accidents have occurred on the Merritt Parkway. A month after Jane’s, accident, a woman was killed in Harrison, New York on I-95. Recently, a baby girl was killed in Massachusetts when a tree fell on their car while traveling with a Connecticut woman.
The probability of a tree falling by the roadside can be reduced by proper forest management. The risk can be mitigated, while replacing defective trees with ones that can withstand climate change, just as proposed by DOT Commissioner Eucalitto.
New Haven does an admirable job in conducting a street-side inventory using modern techniques to identify diseased trees. These techniques are also proposed by South Central Regional Council of Governments SCROG. Their recommendations can be adopted at all governmental levels.
We just need towns to adopt these forest management tools to avoid future disasters.
Thanks to climate change, the days of safe tree-canopied thoroughfares are long gone.
Jerry Shaw lives in Branford.