Our Tree Incident

[Geek44]

Was busily typing a PM to our very own Jim yesterday when my partner yelled out 'Look!' I turned in time to witness a part of a tree in our garden come crashing to the ground. It cut our garage in half and made a pancake out of one of our cars. We're very well insured so it's not a disaster.
The tree itself is a Eucalyptus Regnan...the tallest growing species I believe and I would guess it's around forty metres tall. Ours has grown three trunks out of the one root mass and only one of these trunks has fallen. I'm conservative when I guess it weighs around seven tons...we now have firewood for two lifetimes and mulch for a football field.

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In this pic, the three trunks that are roughly the same thickness are all a single tree, the fourth is a branch. It's the trunk on the far left that has fallen.

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From a different angle you can see that the far right 'trunk' is actually a branch. In this pic, it's the far right trunk that has fallen aross the shed you can see. We have a car parked inside. Well, it was a car.

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I took this pic standing under a pine tree that was just grazed by the top branches of the trunk that fell. In the approximate centre of the pic you can see another pine that had a whole fork sliced off where the scar is. The Elm to the left has been halved by the pine fork. Our view of the city at night is greatly improved...behind me as I stood to take the pic.

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And finally, the bole. The ladder is a standard six footer or thereabouts. Our main access is just behind the trunk and we've had to crawl underneath the gap you see. Makes the hair stand up on your head. The tree crew was here all day today (Saturday) and they won't finish until Tuesday. I hope that the whole garage will be written off and I can build a purpose built study with proper lighting, plenty of shelves, a huge desk and an extractor fan.
The whole neighbourhood is fine for firewood for next winter too.
Peace.

[McCoy]

Ouch, that could very well have gone really bad if someone had been inside the garage at the time.

[Tom Houlihan]

Well, it's not often that a disaster like that works out to one's benefit, but, um... Best of luck with yer fallen tree!!!

[Geek44]

Thanks chaps. The dog survived as well. He'll be sixteen next week.

[vitara]

good to here that the crew is safe there geek my god you were
lucky .....
best mark

[Leatchy]

Maaaaaaaate! What the!

You gotta love insurance. Glad the family and house were ok. Bet Flynn thinks it's the ducks nuts.

[Whiterook]

Good Heavens mate, glad you and the family are alright. That is one nasty happening. Wishing you the best in a speedy resolution to the insurance portion of things, and please, keep us aprised of the new construction...sounds like a new modeling sace is in the plans? How about the car? Will the insurance cover getting something decent to replace it?

[cyberia]

Wow, Nick. Looks much worse than you first described it. Thankfully it did not hit the house or any of the Geek Clan.

Tom was just saying he needed firewood. You might want to PM him directions.

[Wustenfuchs]

Wow! Glad no one got hurt. A Eucalyptus fell on our house once many years ago, was only about 8 inch dia. but still did damage, nothing at all like your
Jurassic Park specimen!

[Geek44]

There's a local rumour that the tallest tree (as opposed to the largest or bulkiest) ever harvested was taken from around these parts. It could be just parochial back-slapping...'hey, our trees are so tall', but it could also be true. There's no doubt that California Redwoods and Giant Sequoia trees are consistently larger than most of what we have here, but I can easily imagine that famous photo of the car driving through the tree having been taken around here too. Keep in mind that the part that fell is only 1/3 of the tree.