A tree fell across Divisadero this afternoon, blocking street traffic in what seems to be becoming a weekly occurrence.
The tree came down at around 2:35pm today, according to tipster Richard D., who sent in a couple photos.
Another tree came down on Fell and Broderick the previous Friday, not far away. And another just fell in the under-maintained Panhandle yesterday, following the bench-crushing crash of a large branch earlier this week. Back in December, yet another large tree fell across Divisadero and blocked traffic. Nobody has been injured in any of these incidents, fortunately, but this weekend's Panhandle falling tree missed hitting a cyclist by inches.
There are lots of important things for the citizens of San Francisco to spend money on, and over many years the city's 105,000 street trees haven't made the list. And yet, nature has a certain way of nagging.
There's now a growing will to make city tree care more of a civic priority, after decades of planting followed by neglect. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to support the Urban Forest Plan – the goal being to reverse a Department of Public Works effort to hand over care to nearby property owners. But the DPW is trying to rid itself of the problem because it says it doesn't have the money for proper tree care, and so far the proposed master plan hasn't figured the money problem out either.
Money doesn't grow on trees, but paying to stop constant tree problems might save everyone some in the long run.
Read all about the long-term problems behind these increasingly frequent issues in our post from last month, Street Tree Problems To Get Worse Before They Get Better.
And with that, here are some social media perspectives of today's incident for your consideration.
Tree just fell over in front of my eyes at Page and Divis! Fortunately no one injured pic.twitter.com/FZOxfYPJlE
— Matt Greene (@mateo_verde) February 15, 2015SF peeps: avoid Divisadero. Fallen tree at Divis and Page. pic.twitter.com/b93QNFd8el
— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) February 15, 2015Another one bites the pavement blocking off Divis both directions @HoodlineSF @SFUrbanForester pic.twitter.com/ZhUhoy2nTL
— Ashley Schoenknecht (@askdzign) February 15, 2015Giant tree fell across Divis at Page, whole street is blocked off. Took out Muni wires too pic.twitter.com/73ltr7HjMO
— We Built This City (@TheRealWBTC) February 15, 2015@HL_Divisadero Nothing out of the ordinary. I had just locked my bike up right next to it and went inside Little Chihuahua seconds before
— Matt Greene (@mateo_verde) February 16, 2015Thanks to additional tipsters Kurt H. Mike G., Burt H. and more.
