NEW ORLEANS —
A chainsaw is not what you want to hear in a mature oak grove, especially in New Orleans City Park, home to some of the oldest trees in the south.
Two, 300-year-old live oaks fell during the Labor Day deluge that dumped about 7 inches of rain in the park in a matter of hours.
Friday morning, a crew finished removing the pair of trees along City Park Avenue.
“We did have one oak tree, about ten feet up from its base snap off in half and fell into another oak tree, splitting that second oak tree right down the middle,” City Park COO Chris Maitre said.
Park visitors said it’s sad to see a piece of history as old as the city itself, now gone.
“One of my favorite things in the city is being around these trees here,” park visitor Alec Pianovich said. “I spend large portions of my time right here just enjoying them. Hopefully we don’t lose anymore.”
“Other than the shade, it’s history,” park visitor Chris Engolia said. “I love them. It’s natural history in a sense. To see something that old go out in a little rainstorm, it’s disheartening.”
Maitre said these trees have weathered many storms, but sustained damage over the years.
Termites also took a toll on the oaks.
“Unfortunately, all those combinations of lightning strikes, termites, the drought and then the quick water saturation caused the weight of a lot of the limbs on the tree to basically triple in weight and the tree could not hold up,” Maitre said.
The loss of the two majestic oaks has opened the space and canopy near City Park’s Butler Fountain.
This is where generations of New Orleanians have come to take family photos. Some have even gotten married there. These two trees will certainly be missed.
“My buddy Ben and I play the guitar over there sometimes, you know, I’ll miss them,” Pianovich said. “We’re lucky to have all these other ones. They’re all special trees.”
“Unfortunately, it’s part of life, the life expectancy of these trees,” park visitor Susan Strickland said. “They’re old trees. They’re fragile.”
“It’s a terrible loss for the park,” Maitre said. “We openly wept about it. We were very hard pressed to really not take them about because of the safety issues.”
Park officials inspected all their other historic oaks and say these were the only two damaged in Monday’s storm.