Seventy-three trees at Lighthouse Point Park were either toppled or so badly damaged that they need to be removed thanks to last week\u2019s high-wind storm, and another 56 need to be pruned to address broken branches \u2014 but should otherwise remain standing.<\/p>\n
City Tree System Coordinator \/ Tree Warden Annie Mixsell provided the Independent with that update Monday afternoon, in the wake of an overnight storm Thursday<\/a> that also caused significant damage to the historic carousel building.<\/a><\/p>\n That total of 129 trees is out of several hundred in the more open area of the park with the picnic tables, lawns, buildings, and parking, as opposed to the more densely forested area of the park.<\/p>\n Last week\u2019s storm has left the park indefinitely closed to the public, as the city works to figure out if the carousel building can be saved \u2014 and what needs to be cleaned up in order for the waterfront park to be safe for visitors to return to.<\/p>\n Mixsell was out inspecting trees at the Morris Cove park Monday morning, just as she\u2019s done each day since Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re picking away at it,\u201d she said, and \u201cmaking some pretty decent progress\u201d in identifying which trees have fallen over, which are so badly damaged that they need to be removed, and which have been battered but can otherwise stay in place after some pruning.<\/p>\n Mixsell said that a wide variety of trees were damaged by last week\u2019s storm. There were oaks and hickories in the more heavily forested areas of the park. In the more open areas of the park, there were black locusts, black cherries, oaks, maples, and lindens.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the parts where the strongest winds were, there wasn\u2019t much that was spared,\u201d she said. \u201cI did notice a couple of elms completely unscathed,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Mixsell said that the park lost \u201csome very large oaks, some very large black cherries [and] maples by the picnic area.\u201d Just how large? Some of the fallen oaks \u201care over three feet [in] diameter,\u201d she said. There were also some \u201cmulti-trunked\u201d black cherries that were two or three feet in diameter that were toppled.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are salvaging as much as possible\u201d with the hopes that the wood from the fallen trees \u201ccan be used in some way,\u201d Mixsell said, perhaps as benches at the park.<\/p>\n Mixsell recalled driving to the park soon after 7 a.m. on Thursday with the city parks chief Max Webster and saying to him, \u201cI could cry,\u201d when she saw all of the damaged trees.<\/p>\n Just last winter, her division had \u201cdone maintenance pruning\u201d on just about every tree that wound up falling due to the storm. She said that, in May, Lighthouse Point Park hosted the Connecticut Tree Climbing Competition<\/a>. Many of the trees used in that competition also wound up falling because of the storm.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s sad and it\u2019s terrible,\u201d she said about all the tree wreckage. It\u2019s also an opportunity to think about how \u201cwe can replant and we can plan\u201d for where trees should be placed in the park.<\/p>\n Why exactly did last week\u2019s storm cause such widespread damage to the park\u2019s trees?<\/p>\n Mixsell pointed to the storm\u2019s wind speeds, which reportedly reached 100 miles per hour or more. \u201cThose trees didn\u2019t have a chance with that threshold of wind.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s next for her division\u2019s tree work at Lighthouse Point Park?<\/p>\n In the next week or two, Mixsell said, \u201cwe\u2019ll have made great progress on trees,\u201d getting everything \u201cas pruned as possible\u201d so that the park can be made safe to return to for the public.<\/p>\n Next she and city parks leaders will need to sit down and think through \u201cwhere trees belong in the park,\u201d and come up with a replanting plan.<\/p>\n More broadly speaking, she also pointed to her division\u2019s Tree Master Plan efforts. \u201cThis plan will guide the city in the management of our public trees for the next 50 years.\u201d <\/p>\n Click here <\/a>to fill out the city\u2019s Tree Plan Community Survey, and click here <\/a>to read a StoryMap with more info.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seventy-three trees at Lighthouse Point Park were either toppled or so badly damaged that they need to be…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1007222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23],"tags":[403242,746,403243,159,7925,7453,18090,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1007221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-annie-mixsell","tag-environment","tag-lighthouse-point-park","tag-science","tag-storm","tag-top-story","tag-trees","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117112831029655998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1007222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}