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Two falling trees |
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| FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 | ||||||
 A family from St. Catherine's Ontario bought this house on July 4th and immediately set about making plans to rennovate the house and property. Today there was work in the front yard which is right on main street Tisdale a block north of the McKay tower, and in the back yard. Chupa Excavation had removed the trees and an old building in the back yard on the weekend and today Colin was drilling in holes for the columns that are going under the footings for the addition on the back of the house and the new garage. Out front the lower branches on |
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 two huge spruce trees was being removed in preparation for them to be knocked down. At about 11:10 it was time for the one on the corner of the lot to be pushed over landing on the street then pulled up on the front yard to be cut up into manageable pieces. It is always surprising to discover that such huge spruce trees have only surface roots and are easily toppled over. It was only a few minutes from the time it came down until it was reduced to just a pile of material as the tree had been bucked and piled out of the way ready to be hauled away. |
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 With the piles all drilled a Little's Redimix truck arrived right on time to begin pouring cement into the rebarbed holes. With the debris cleared the front yard it was time to sort out the much larger tree on the south side of the lot. First the huge backhoe was used to break away the massive roots on the east and west sides of the tree then it was time to get a line up to the upper portion of the tree. Gerald Chupa got into the bucket of the backhoe with three logging chains and Collin carefully raised him up more than half way up the tree. With a little tree climbing Gerald positioned the chain around the trunk and in minutes the three chains were linked and attached to the |
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 bucket. Now this is a delicate matter and it takes years of experience to judge the height of a tree like this and then to control its fall so that it does not damage property and other trees that are to remain around the yard. No matter how much fun it looks like don't even think about attempting a project like this if you are new to cutting down trees. A tree weighs and enormous amount and when that weight goes in motion it moves very fast and can destroy thing and even experienced workers get injured working falling really big trees. Below we can see the chains on the bucket and heavy pressure applied to the tree even before |
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 any cutting took place. Carefully Gerald took a big wedge out of the fall direction of the tree even with a bit of east angle to ensure that the tree did not take a turn toward the house. With the cut completed Collin eased the backhoe backward and like a mighty bow the tree flexed then there was a loud crack as the south side of it broke and the tree fell neatly onto the front yard exactly where it was suppose to go. There remains in the picture below one last spruce tree but it is slated for removal later in the day. At five minutes to twellve the two trees that had commanded that corner for much of Tisdale's |
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 history have ended their vidual making way for some light to get to the ground and give the new owners a front yard to their house. Though spruce trees offer a nice habitat for birds and bugs they can be a nuisance. This past year many yards have been dramatically improved by taking the bing green monsters down. In our yard we have a nasty black poplar and half a dozen over grown spruce trees that need to suffer a similar fate. If you would like to see these two trees fall just click on the Quicktime image below and a short QuickTime video will come up on your screen. If it does not appear you may need to download the latest version of QuickTime. |
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