Check your trees for hazards

bcp · Oct 27, 2022

Hiker on Lake Ann Trail dies after dead wood falls from tree | 790 KGMI

Deputies, along with Bellingham Mountain Rescue, Glacier Fire, and Kendall Fire, were able to recover her body.

kgmi.com

Bruce

scootr · Oct 27, 2022

What are the odds?

ljjhouser · Oct 27, 2022

one in a million

Between bears and trees, I guess staying home is becoming an option. That is terrible.

ponytug · Oct 27, 2022

There's a reason that dead limbs are known as "widow makers". Some trees are especially prone to them. (Around here eucalyptus especially.)

Hereabouts, there is the hot day / no wind problem that literally explodes limbs off of trees due to the hydrostatic pressure of the sap accumulating in the limbs and not enough wind to transpire the water. I had no idea about it until it happened just outside my window one afternoon. It sound like a 12ga shotgun had gone off.

All the best,

Peter

Will S · Oct 27, 2022

This nearly happened to me about a year ago, right on my own property. We have a few dozen very large oak trees in the mowing areas. I was on the Woods (diesel) mower, and made a pass close to one of those trees (which also has a rope swing attached to a large branch about 20+ feet off the ground).

Just as I passed the tree I heard, (over the noise of the diesel and hearing protectors), and felt the ground shake. I stopped and looked back, and there was a branch from 6" to 8" dia and 9 feet long, laying on the ground right behind the mower where I just mowed 5 or 6 seconds earlier.

scootr · Oct 27, 2022

The danger is real. The timing is not

. Had this hiker stopped to retie a shoe or watch a bird land or had to pee... they would be alive. I saw a video of a car driving along a roadway when a huge tree fell on the car and killed the driver.

flyerdan · Oct 27, 2022

ponytug said:
...no wind problem that literally explodes limbs off of trees due to the hydrostatic pressure of the sap accumulating in the limbs and not enough wind to transpire the water...

That's the theory for what happened to my across the road neighbor's big oak tree. It was a hot July morning, plumb still and had been hot and windless for quite a while. Water was pouring out of the cuts. Biggest diameter is about 33".

Jstpssng · Oct 27, 2022

That's sad. I don't believe in luck, fate, or predestiny yet there are some things you can't avoid; it was just her time to do.

Wagtail · Oct 27, 2022

Meh... Over here, eucalypt trees will randomly 'cast' a limb/branch, especially when it's dead calm.

You can't win. We've had tent-campers killed simply by pitching underneath a gum-tree.

dstig1 · Oct 27, 2022

It happened in a park or trail in Minneapolis a few years back. 2 ladies were walking on a path and a tree or limb fell and killed one of them out of the blue. Found it. Link below. 2014. I was off a bit on details, but close...