NDG's old trees rotting too fast to be maintained, arborist says
Rotten NDG tree falls overnight, causing power outages, damage to cars
An arborist in the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-des-Grâces borough says he and his colleagues can't keep up with the number of trees that are rotting and unstable, following the collapse of a tree in NDG that caused power outages and damaged cars overnight.
No one was hurt after a 75-year-old silver maple fell onto the road on Marcil Avenue at about 2:00 am on Tuesday.
The tree initially knocked out power for about 187 households, but Hydro-Québec workers were able to restore power to all but 75 homes, which will remain without electricity until approximately 5:00 pm.
"The tree [was] falling down, the cables [were] fizzling," said Nilou Baradaran, who lives across the street from where the tree fell.
"It wasn't very surprising because about five, six years ago there was a tree on this side that fell and totalled four cars."
Arborist Yves St. Laurent told CBC News the combination of wind, disease, and small root structure brought down the tree.
"Yes, the tree was hollow, but it was absolutely not negligence, because there's no way you can tell," said St. Laurent, adding that the tree looked healthy from the outside.
St. Laurent said the borough only has about a dozen arborists to look after its trees.
"We'd have to be 25-30 of us to be able to maintain them, to be able to go ahead and maintain every tree," he said.
St. Laurent estimates he and his colleagues receive at least 2,000 complaints a year from residents about problems with trees near their property, forcing them to sometimes forgo preventative maintenance to focus on emergency cases.
"Plus we have the ash borer problem. We removed 500 trees this winter, so we're very busy," said St. Laurent.
The Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-des-Grâces borough has one of the city's largest and oldest tree populations, according to St. Laurent. He said it's inevitable that more and more trees will come down given their age.