A cluster of dead trees can increase the risk of wildfires in places like Yellowstone National Park, where a recent study found that there are roughly 40% of such trees standing in the popular tourist spot.
Or in California, where the southern most part of the state was engulfed in flames last month, killing at least 29 people and displacing tens of thousands of others.
While dead trees won’t lead to a natural disaster in Chicago, they have caused serious injuries — and costly settlements with the city — when parts of them have fallen off or they toppled over.
Erick Leon, an avid cyclist, was left paralyzed and wheelchair-bound after a 40-foot limb broke off a parkway tree in Lincoln Park in 2011.
Less than a decade later, Nicholas Pellegrino suffered traumatic brain injury after a tree fell and hit him in the head as he inspected his car battery outside his residence in Uptown.
Neighbors had complained about the decayed trees before both tragic accidents.
The city made significant progress after compensating Leon with $5.75 million. Since then, it has boosted its spending on tree-trimming and minimized the backlog of tree-trimming requests. By the fall of 2023, 53,188 trees were trimmed in the prior 10 months — a 172% improvement over the same period the year before, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard has said.
Those are encouraging statistics. Improvement is always welcome.
But Pellegrino’s horrific encounter with a plummeting dead tree is an example of the disastrous toll, both human and financial, that can result when the ball is dropped on 311 calls: The city has had a track record of not followung up promptly on these calls and requests, whether for tree-trimming or other services.
“This one fell through the cracks,” as Pellegrino’s attorney, Colin Dunn, put it. The young man spent two months in the hospital after the accident.
Of two “tree emergencies,” two tree removals and six tree-trim requests in the 700 block of West Hutchinson Street, where Pellegrino was standing in December 2020, all but one request was “completed,” according to a spreadsheet the city provided Dunn.
No explanation was offered as to why the one request was not taken care of.
Chicagoans might not know that, but they do know this: They will be on the hook for $3.5 million to compensate Pellegrino for the terrible accident caused by the city’s neglect.
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