Fallen trees raise concerns after rain
By Charlotte Hsu
March 3, 2005 9:00 p.m.
As some students expressed concern over safety after trees on
the hillside behind the Saxon Suites fell with last week’s
rains, a UCLA official said little can be done to prevent future
incidents.
Maintenance crews have cleared the three trees, which stood
among others on a steep incline next to the flight of wooden stairs
connecting the suites to Gayley Avenue. They toppled over during
back-to-back storms last week, with at least one landing on a
covered bus stop on the sidewalk.
“There’s no way we can prevent a tree from
falling,” said E.J. Kirby, director of campus
maintenance.
When it rains, the moisture adds to trees’ weights,
increasing the likelihood that they will fall, he said.
“They were planted on a slope to begin with,” he
said, adding that it was “presumptuous” for anyone to
call last week’s falling trees a safety issue.
“Is any street in Southern California safe?” he
said. “A tree will blow out surprisingly. That’s just
the nature of trees. There is no safety issue.”
Jack Gibbons, associate director of the Office of Residential
Life, said he hadn’t heard about the trees, whose trunks
remain uprooted on the hillside and range from 14 to 21 inches
across.
Paul Kellar, a fourth-year political science student who walks
frequently along Gayley, said he doesn’t feel the university
is responsible for warning students and others of the possibility
of falling trees.
But UCLA should cut down or reinforce unstable trees before they
topple, said Kellar while he stood about 50 feet away from a metal
bus stop sign bent last week after being hit by one of the
trees.
Geography Professor Antony Orme said while he hadn’t seen
the site behind Saxon, there are ways to identify trees that might
not hold in wet weather.
“You can investigate the type of tree, the type of root
system,” he said. “It’s always good to prune some
of these trees in this environment.”
Trees with good primary roots or tap roots are more likely to
stay standing on an incline and in heavy rains, he said.
In contrast, shallow-rooted trees like Monterey pines or
eucalyptus can more easily slip downslope during a storm.
“You have to deal with it on a tree-by-tree and a
slope-by-slope basis. … These are really complex issues,”
Orme said. “I would really have to go look at the individual
trees.”
