A Tree Tragedy
On my way home Saturday night I noticed some excitement in our street. There was a mixture of flashes of red and blue obscured by some dark object in the road. My mother phoned me earlier to warn me that the tree in front of the house has been blown over by stormy winds that we where experiencing that evening. A month earlier, after filing a tree complaint, the Ekurhuleni Municipality assessed their tree, found that it died and that is should be removed. Obviously they didn’t act soon enough.
The first phone call made was at 5:22 PM while it was still light informing the authorities of the problem. They were warned that soon it would be dark and no one would be able to see the huge tree in the road. The second phone call made to repeat the warning of the road hazard was made at 6:00 PM and had little effect. At 6:20, while there was still some light left, an individual with a white Ford Cortina drove down the road at a steady speed that suddenly made a BRUSHING CRACKLING SOUND as the car disappeared into the branches of the tree. Apparently he wasn’t really looking at the road, but fortunately no one got hurt. As a result the third call was made promptly, which yielded a better response. Unsurprisingly, the first vehicle on the scene was a tow-truck followed soon after by a metro police vehicle. Then 10 minutes or so later a fire truck arrived, tried and failed to cut the tree out of the road as their saws were blunt (one of which broke).
After succumbing to their failings as lumberjacks, the firemen and policeman sat in our living room trying to call up their superiors informing them of the situation; with little success. The firemen left when they realized that there was nothing they could do (according to them it was Metro Parks’ responsibility) while the policeman returned to his car with his police lights switched on. WHAM. Another car drove into the other side; closer to the roots of the tree. When the police officer got out of his car, in the middle of the road, flashing his torch at the oncoming vehicle, the driver thought she would just drive around him. Apparently she didn’t have her driver’s license handy… which probably explains why she didn’t want to stop. She obviously didn’t expect the road to be barricaded by nature, but fortunately only egos where bruised a little and no one got hurt. Just after 10:00 we made the last call for the evening explaining to the call centre manager that all we wanted was for someone to put up traffic warning lights. He phoned us back 20 minutes later assuring us that there was someone on his way and that he would take the necessary precautions to ensure no one else drove into the tree. That never happened, but fortunately there were no further accidents.
The next morning at about 8:15 another call was made and the same fire truck of the night before was sent out to resolve the issue. As they reclaimed that they can’t do anything, our neighbour came out with a chainsaw and started hacking at the tree. Our neighbour has his own garden service and realized that the municipality wouldn’t be of much help even though it was their tree. The firemen decided to help and cut smaller branches with their saws. Quick work was made of the tree as it was chopped into pieces and packed onto the sidewalk.
