NEW ORLEANS — A Friday afternoon in Jackson Square was met with a loud sound of thunder then screams as a tree branch fell on a teenager. The part of the live oak trapped him, as witnesses say many ran over to try and pull him out. He was then rushed to the hospital.
Three days later, Parks and Parkways was at Jackson Square removing the tree, Monday. But, Friday wasn’t the first time part of the tree broke off.
According to the city, the tree was inspected June 27, the day the first limb fell.
“The mature live oak was inspected by Parks and Parkways arborists on June 27 while performing clean up to remove a large failed limb (referred to as a leader). The tree was again inspected on June 28. The determination then was made to perform additional pruning on a smaller dead limb and reevaluate the health and balance of the tree once specialized equipment was made available to access the square. When an immediate risk for failure is observed through arborist inspection, a tree is removed immediately. Our arborists concluded, based on the two remaining sections of the tree, that there was not an elevated risk of additional large limb or whole tree failure,” The city said in a statement to WWLTV.
We took a tree specialist out to Jackson Square Monday. Timothy Benton, owner of Benton Tree Services, said the tree is rotten on the inside, but it looks fairly healthy from the outside.
“I didn’t see any jagged cracks I didn’t see any dominant unions nothing on the lower trunk indicated that the tree would fail imminently,” Benton said.
What is obvious, Benton said, is there was a shear plane separation.
“Let’s say you had two branches growing together in proximity but not truly joined. So when this one tears off you have a flat surface left from where it split off and it’s usually on a live oak it’s going to be jagged it’ll look like a jagged rectangular pattern,” Benton said.
Benton said between the first limb falling, the shear plane separation and the rotten wood, the dynamic of the tree was changed.
“One side fell and the side that was left now it’s not balanced so because of the physics you have a tremendous amount of twist on this branch that’s remaining,” Benton said. “Normally that’s fine, normally a live oak can tolerate it but there was a shear plane inclusion lower in the trunk that caused it to fail.”