A tree that stood for decades in Crown Heights fell during Monday\u2019s blizzard, its branches grazing adjacent fire escapes as it thundered to the pavement of Park Place near Bedford Avenue.<\/p>\n
The parks department on Tuesday dispatched emergency crews to chop up and remove the thornless honeylocust from the roadway.<\/p>\n
It was one of dozens of beloved trees that fell victim to this week\u2019s blizzard, which dumped more than 20 inches of snow across the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge old tree,\u201d he observed. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy, I hope it didn\u2019t land on anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacques Symby said he\u2019s lived in the neighborhood for almost 40 years, but that he\u2019s never seen a tree so large fall down in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s several trees that was bent over on other blocks and then just the other day my girlfriend was like \u2018oh this tree looks like it’s about to fall\u2019\u2026 and now I\u2019m going to work and I see this tree fall and I\u2019m like \u2018Damn, I think the other trees may fall, too,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy, it looks like they\u2019re going to have to do inspections on the rest of the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Ganser, with the group New Yorkers for Parks, said that years of budget cuts have hobbled the department\u2019s ability to address trees that are crying out for help.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIt’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,\u201d said Ganser. \u201cThey’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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parks officials said that the agency had activated four emergency contract crews to help clear downed trees from Monday\u2019s storm.<\/p>\n
Advocates like Ganser have clamored for years to get at least 1% of the city\u2019s budget dedicated to the parks department. While Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on making it happen<\/a>, the news website The City reported<\/a> that his first budget proposal would keep parks funding roughly flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tree that stood for decades in Crown Heights fell during Monday\u2019s blizzard, its branches grazing adjacent fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-145163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}