Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The leaning tree of Woodside


From NY1:

A huge, 100-year-old tree sits right outside Mickey Garnploog's house in Woodside, Queens and he says it's slowly but surely uprooting.

"The sidewalk is breaking up due to the uprooting and when people walk pass by they just trip and sometimes they fall," Garnploog says.

What's more worrisome than the sidewalk is what will happen if the huge tree falls.

The homeowner, who can barely open his gate to get his car out due to the lifting sidewalk, says he filed a complaint with the city six months ago.

NY1 called the city Parks Department and inspectors were sent to the site. The tree was examined and found to be in good, healthy condition according to a department spokesman. He said the damaged sidewalk is eligible for repair under Parks' Tree & Sidewalks program and is scheduled to be included in the next repair contract, which starts this fall.

In the meantime, Garnploog hopes the tree stays rooted.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mickey- just wondering. Are you of any relation to Nit Garnploog?

Jimmy said...

"The tree was examined and found to be in good, healthy condition...the damaged sidewalk is eligible for repair under Parks' Tree & Sidewalks program."

So what's the problem?

Anonymous said...

Mickey- just wondering. Are you of any relation to Nit Garnploog?

Just curtious...who wants to know?

r185 said...

From what I understand that type of tree has a live span of about 85 years. So, unfortunately it may have to be taken down before if falls down.

Anonymous said...

Good luck. You will go on the list based on severity. They will not consider this tree a severe issue and it will get a low attn number which means years before they do anything.

Anonymous said...

Good luck buddy don't park under this tree!

Anonymous said...

it looks like the tree will fall towards the street....if it ever falls.

Mickey said...

Thank you for everyone's support in this matter. It seems like a trivial thing for me to complain about but what NY1 didn't cover is that the tree is breaking my sidewalk and the sidewalk is flooding my ground. The ground water is retained, then slowly seeps into a crawl space in my newly finished basement causing a flood. Now I know you guys are going to say I should get a dry well, sump pump or flood insurance. But unfortunately I could not get flood insurance and the first two issues I needed the city to see that first. That they were the ones to cause damage to my house because they wouldn't remove the tree...thus causing this domino effect. Thank you for everyone's input and watching my story. I hope this never happens to anyone

Anonymous said...

my neighbor has a 100' tree at the curb in front of the right side of his house. the large roots were preventing him from parking his car at the side of his house. he had the root shaved three feet and now jumps the curb to park.
.
he would not pay for a curb cut permit. and parks would not cut it down.

the forestry dept. told me the tree would not fall because of the shave.

solution :remove the sidewalk, shave the root and remove it. put in a new sidewalk. the flooding should stop if drainage and grass is appropriate.

Rick said...

Yikes. I don't agree with Anonymous from Friday, August 03, 2012. A homeowner in Queens shaved his street tree's roots about 10 years ago. On a breezy day, the tree went down because the roots were too short. Killed a little girl in a van.