A tree that stood for decades in Crown Heights fell during Monday’s blizzard, its branches grazing adjacent fire escapes as it thundered to the pavement of Park Place near Bedford Avenue.
The parks department on Tuesday dispatched emergency crews to chop up and remove the thornless honeylocust from the roadway.
It was one of dozens of beloved trees that fell victim to this week’s blizzard, which dumped more than 20 inches of snow across the five boroughs.
Parks officials said 47 trees were toppled by the storm, and that crews were still working to remove seven of them from the streets on Wednesday. New Yorkers flooded the 311 system with 1,800 reports about the downed trees, though officials said many of them were duplicates.
Thomas Wee, 27, was walking home when he saw the tree stretched across Park Place in Crown Heights, its branches stretched across several parked cars.
“It’s a huge old tree,” he observed. “It’s pretty crazy, I hope it didn’t land on anyone.”
Crews were forced to close off a block of Park Place in Brooklyn after a tree fell down during this week's blizzard.
Jacques Symby said he’s lived in the neighborhood for almost 40 years, but that he’s never seen a tree so large fall down in the area.
“There’s several trees that was bent over on other blocks and then just the other day my girlfriend was like ‘oh this tree looks like it's about to fall’… and now I’m going to work and I see this tree fall and I’m like ‘Damn, I think the other trees may fall, too,’” he said. “It’s crazy, it looks like they’re going to have to do inspections on the rest of the streets.”
Adam Ganser, with the group New Yorkers for Parks, said that years of budget cuts have hobbled the department’s ability to address trees that are crying out for help.
“ It's very hard to say what can or can't be done when you have a massive snowstorm, but I can say that the parks department is unable to care for the trees that it's supposed to be taken care of,” said Ganser. “They're short-staffed, insanely short-staffed within the forestry division, but they don't have the funding to outsource a lot of the forestry work.”
Parks officials said that the agency had activated four emergency contract crews to help clear downed trees from Monday’s storm.
Advocates like Ganser have clamored for years to get at least 1% of the city’s budget dedicated to the parks department. While Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on making it happen, the news website The City reported that his first budget proposal would keep parks funding roughly flat.
