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Watch for falling trees in forest, town

By Patricia Miller
Herald Staff Writer


Dave Parks, of Durango, looks over the mess of a spruce tree in his back yard
on West Second Avenue on Monday that recent high winds tore in half. The tree
had been first damaged about 25 years ago by winds and then again this past
Wednesday and Thursday.
Trees are falling. Are wild microbursts of wind with a ferocity we haven't seen
until the last few years knocking them over, or is it just nature as usual?

Dave Parks, of 2575 West Second Ave. in Durango, attributes his appalling luck
with falling trees to the microburst theory.

His venerable, 70-year-old blue spruce is finally gone. The 90-foot-tall tree
was first weakened 25 years ago when wind snapped off its top 30 feet. The
spruce grew back with four separate tops.

At 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Parks watched one of the four tops blow down into his
neighbor's yard. It was a microburst, he said.

At 3:30 the next afternoon, the second microburst got another of the spruce's
four tops and carried half of a neighboring elm along with it, as both trees
toppled into the neighbor's yard.

Now the spruce is lopsided and leaning toward Parks' house, so he is
regretfully having its remains taken out.

"I've lived in Durango all my life, and we've never had winds like this until
the last two or three years," Parks said.

"Luckily no one was hurt, but anyone who'd been out in that yard could have
been killed," he added.

On Saturday afternoon, more than half of a ponderosa pine fell on a modular
house on Alpine Forest Drive in the Forest Lakes subdivision. Again, no one was
injured.

Fire Officer Corolla Hanks, who answered the call with a crew from the Upper
Pine River Fire Protection District, blamed a combination of factors.

"The tree had a damaged place on it and the drought wasn't helping. Then the
wind was the final blow," she said.

Dan Wand, of the state forest service, couldn't comment on the tree blown down
in town but warned that too much thinning to ponderosa pines in the forest can
create conditions for wind damage.

If trees have grown in a competitive environment for a hundred years, and then
the forest is thinned, the tall, skinny trees that are left aren't supported
and winds can knock them over, he said.

Wand encourages landowners to be thoughtful when thinning their trees so they
don't take too many at once.

Durango's city arborist, Ron Stoner, agrees with the combination theory.

Wind has a big part to play, he said, but it's a natural occurrence. Drought
means that as the ground dries out, roots are less bonded into the ground. And
disease and decay weaken areas of trees.

Has he been having an unusual number of calls about hazardous microbursts?

"Not any more than normal," Stoner said.