One Tree Done, 200 To Go

City tree trimmer Adam Wambolt heaved a limb up and tossed it into the pile next to the yellow payloader. The rustling pile of wood and leaves was all that was left of a tree that had blocked almost two lanes of traffic on Prospect Street.

Prospect’s felled giant was one of over 200 trees broken and blown by Tropical Storm Isaias on Tuesday. And it was one more tree cleared from Wambolt and crew’s to-do list for Wednesday.

“It’s our first tropical storm of the year. It’s probably one of the worst we’ve had, maybe not including Sandy,” Wambolt said.

Wambolt and other New Haven parks staff had started doing damage control for Tropical Storm Isaias within 15 minutes after it hit New Haven at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Armored with glasses, hard hats and ropes, they weathered the storm’s 63 mile-per-hour winds to push trees to the sides of roads.

One worker is always the lookout during a storm, Wambolt explained. When Wambolt was acting as that spotter on Tuesday, he saw a tree start to fall and warned another city employee to drive out from under it just in time. He said that he personally saw six trees fall during the storm.

The truly dangerous work, from Wambolt’s perspective, is when electrical wires are affected. City employees barricade off those areas and let United Illuminating handle whatever live wires might dangle behind the tape.

On Wednesday morning, Wambolt and his crew had already handled one tree partially collapsed onto electrical wires. They had to make sure the power was out before they removed it.

The tree at the corner of Prospect and Grove Street was another top priority. Uprooted during the storm, it had strewn itself across the road. The city’s payloader (pictured) came to the rescue to scoop and crunch it into manageable pieces.

Some of the lengths of wood were still too long for the crew’s truck. Rob Massetti walked forward with a chainsaw to dispatch these errant limbs.

Mark Tartaglia (pictured) directed passing drivers and bicyclists into the one lane of Prospect free of machinery, while Louie Ladano operated the payloader.

“Like Our Super Bowl”

The trunks thunked into the back of the crew’s truck while the payloader whirred and beeped.

“Good times,” Wambolt said. ​“It’s like our Super Bowl.”

Around 10 crews and roughly 50 people worked like this throughout the city on Wednesday, according to city Public Works Director Jeff Pescosolido. Some were public works employees, some parks department employees, and some subcontractors.

Not all felled trees ranked as critical as the tree on Prospect. Branches collapsed over the Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen parking lot on Whalley Avenue caught the stares of passersby but left drivers free to travel along the artery.

Lamark Young, a manager at Popeyes, recounted seeing the tree shaking the day before. Then he and the others in Popeyes heard a loud crack.

“Nobody was injured. Everybody was just shaken up,” Young said.

The branches fell over two cars. One driver was able to drive his truck out from under the wreckage of leaves. The other driver had to leave his car overnight.

Popeyes General Manager Mike DiBianco said that driver, an elderly man, had just gotten out of his car and reached the door when the branches fell. Ten seconds slower and the customer could have been injured or worse, DiBianco said. When DiBianco encouraged him to grab valuables from his car and leave it in the parking lot, the man pulled out a Bible, DiBianco recounted.

“He put that near his heart and said, ​‘Thank you, God,’” DiBianco said.

Young (pictured), DiBianco and other employees swept up what debris they could while they waited for city help.

The first step of that help came in the form of the city’s urban forester Fernando Lage. Lage assessed whether the tree was city-owned. (It was, planted as it was between the sidewalk and the street.) He explained that dangerous dangling branches are a top priority alongside clearing streets. Clearing sidewalks and private property came next.

The cleaning up all the debris from Isaias might take a month, Lage said.

Lage was running on three hours of sleep after working late into the previous night. He said that around eight trees had fallen on houses, but nothing was too serious. No one had to be evacuated, he said. (One person was seriously injured on Newhall Street, however.)

Lage counted out 200 tree complaints that the city was starting to work through that morning. He said that police officers, parks crews and others would continue to send in downed trees and branches throughout the day. The Popeyes tree had just been added to the list before Lage got on the scene.

“I’m sure our list will double by the end of the day,” Lage said.

Looking at the tree partially splintered into the Popeyes parking lot, Lage realized that his team would have to remove the entire tree eventually.

“See how it ripped into the trunk,” Lage said, pointing. ​“That will never heal. That induces rot and cavities. In the end, it condemns the tree.”

That rot might take years but the tree had almost no chance of surviving this hit. Large, mature trees like this all over the city were either down or past recovery, Lage said.

“Some people are saying this was worse than Sandy because of the wind,” he remarked. ​“It all depends on how it hits and its direction.”