Two deaths from falling tree branches in the same Toronto park should be a wake-up call

Arborists are calling into question the way the city is pruning trees in public parks after the second death in Trinity Bellwoods.

thestar.com
Aug. 11, 2023

If you’re like me, when you heard the news that a woman named Pari Nadimi had died after being hit by a falling tree branch in Trinity Bellwoods park in late July, you immediately thought it was one of those unforeseeable freak accidents ---horrifying to contemplate, but difficult to imagine preventing. What are the odds that someone would be right there under a branch when it falls?

But then, when I learned this was the second time this had happened in less than a decade ---a man was killed by a branch falling off the same kind of tree in the same park in 2016 ---it inspired some second thoughts.

And then, when I heard that a local resident ---a landscape designer with some expertise on the subject named Joseph Clement ---had warned parks staff in Trinity Bellwoods this spring that the specific branch on the specific tree was dangerous, and no apparent action was taken before that branch killed a woman, as my colleague Ben Spurr reported earlier this week, then it started to seem like a different kind of accident. One that maybe could have been prevented. Should have been prevented.

Todd Irvine, who I’ve known for almost two decades and who also spoke to Ben Spurr for his story before joining me this week on the Star’s “This Matters” podcast, is an arborist who runs the company City Forest. He didn’t see that specific tree before the accident, but he has been complaining for years to anyone who listens that the way the city is aggressively pruning some trees is making them more dangerous, rather than less. The kind of “lion tail” result that Clement says he saw on that branch in Trinity Bellwoods, which leaves a heavy limb with one bunch of branches at its end, is one of the things Irvine says he’s consistently been trying to warn the city that its contractors should stop doing.

He has sent in specific examples and complaints to forestry staff. He has had long talks about it with city councillors. He has not been convinced the city is addressing the problem.

Worse still, he and Clement have both told me that in response to Nadimi’s death, the city has had crews out in Trinity Bellwoods aggressively pruning trees to demonstrate they are on top of the problems ---and are doing so in a way the two men say makes more trees vulnerable in exactly the same way.

Two other arborists Spurr spoke to did not exactly mirror the assessment of Irvine and Clement, though both did also think the city is making mistakes in how it manages its forest, possibly leading to accidents like the one that took a woman’s life last month. One said “any arborists worth their salt” should have been able to recognize the Siberian elms in Trinity Bellwoods posed a hazard; another said the city is using outdated practices that focus on trimming branches rather than using techniques to proactively assess overall health.

This seems like an issue that is worth the city taking a much closer look at. City spokespeople told Spurr that the city “works hard to maintain city trees in a safe and healthy condition” and is assessing the trees in Trinity Bellwoods to prevent more problems.

But it does seem like when you have a bunch of outside tree experts telling you the way you’re maintaining trees may be part of the problem ---and when one of those people actually tried to warn your staff about a specific threat before it became deadly ---it is time for a more thorough examination of whether your process works.

Protecting our tree canopy in the city ---in parks, on streets and on private property ---is important for a whole bunch of reasons, as Irvine explained to me at length on the podcast, because the trees provide a lot of benefits to residents, psychologically, physically and environmentally. In the long term, vibrant trees could help save lives in the beneficial effect they provide in helping protect us from the ravages of climate change.

But in the short term, taking care of those trees properly can also save lives directly, as we’ve too painfully learned again recently.

If they aren’t already, the city’s parks and forestry department should be reacting to this tragedy not just by rushing out to try to prune any dangerous branches they can find, but by re-evaluating the way they do that pruning ---and as Irvine told me, also possibly by doing it less aggressively but more often ---and how they are managing the millions of trees in their care.

This is one specific case where not only was an apparently freak accident foreseeable, it was foreseen by at least one person, and his warnings went unheeded. Some experts are offering more general warnings about what it thinks are broader foreseeable problems. It behooves our city government to listen carefully.