FALLEN TREES

This was the scene that faced motorists on my estate on Thursday morning after the huge storm on Wednesday night. The road was blocked by a fallen tree.

In the grand Irish tradition of the Meitheal, a neighbour assembled a work group and what had been the topmost branches of the tree were sawn off and cleared from the road, leaving a single lane for cars to exit and enter the estate.

These are the cutaways.

What had come down wasn't a complete tree but one of a number of what appeard major trunks. A substantial weight, though, and it could have done serious damage had there been a passing car, cyclist or pedestrian there at the time. Thankfully this wasn't the case.

On Friday morning the City Council turned up and cleared the road and the path through the green space, sawing the trunk into sections and removing the branches. That was all they were geared up to do. Clear up the mess at ground level.

But the story was a bit more complicated and as some of the tree was rotten, the full tree had to come down. Its height extended to the top of the adjacent apartment bloc and there was one significant branch almost hanging in over the topmost apartment balcony.

The Council were followed by the contractors with the hoist (cherry picker) which was needed to deal with the rest of the tree. The skill here is to cut the tree from the top down having stripped the big branches of their smaller ones so that the big branch don't snag on the way down. These guys knew what they were doing and it was fascinating to watch them.

Their big challenge came with the overhanging branch. I had no idea how they would approach this. They had to be careful it didn't fall into any of the apartment balconies. But they knew what they were doing and had come prepared with a harness.

I thought they were going to attach the harness to the branch and then to the hoist, and wondered if it might capsize the hoist. But they were way ahead of me. They harnessed the top of the branch to a point lower down on the branch and when they cut the top it remained suspended, ready to be guided by hand.

All the small and medium-size stuff then went into the chipper. A noisy and savage beast.

And then came the next and last surprise. A little mechanical grabber to shift the piles of remaining logs into the back of a lorry.

I think I must have spent some two hours looking at all of this smoothly coordinated operation. An absolute education watching people who knew what they were doing.