May 13, 2020
Luckily no one was injured when a large tree fell suddenly in Murgon’s main street on Monday afternoon.
The tree, in QEII Park opposite Betta Home Living, snapped and fell about 4:00pm.
“Thankfully no one was sitting underneath it. It could have been very dangerous,” local businessman Leo Geraghty told southburnett.com.au
Mr Geraghty said the tree was old and had rotted away.
Fortunately, there were also no pedestrians nearby and no parked vehicles were damaged.
Council workers responded quickly to clear away the debris.
Three other trees nearby have now been assessed by Council as being in need of removal.
Cr Kathy Duff told the Murgon Business and Development Association these remaining trees would be removed on Sunday (May 17).
Work is due to start at 7:00am and westbound traffic in Lamb Street will be detoured for 1-2 hours.
“It was fortunate that no one was hurt and that there wasn’t any damage to anyone’s property,” Cr Duff told the MBDA.
“There will be three trees removed on Sunday that have been identified as unhealthy.
“The trees are very old and obviously there is a lot of history and sentiment around them and some are Heritage-listed.
“We will work towards a tree replacement program as we move forward.”
Could have been a tragedy. This doesn’t reflect well on the previous councillors. Hopefully the new councillors will do better.
Buoncer: don’t you realise that most councillors are really “closet” tree huggers, and it’s only after the event that anything happens. Bit sad but that’s how things seem to go!
I disagree, Bouncer. Why would it reflect poorly on the previous councillors? It’s not the councillors job to go about inspecting trees. I would be fairly confident the councillors have more important jobs to do and that inspecting trees should probably be done by one of the many council staff (maybe someone from Parks & Gardens…)
Either way, it’s very good to see that they’re taking precautions by removing the other trees so quickly to prevent this from happening again.
I think Tom is right. As I understand it, Council and Councillors are obliged to act when they’re notified that a tree has fallen (or is in danger of falling) as part of their general duty of care. But until a tree has fallen or they’re notified a dangerous situation is developing they’re in the clear.
The reason for this is that many things can fail suddenly and without warning (eg: the road that slid down the mountainside at Tablelands a few years ago) and no one can reasonably be expected to know in advance when these random things are going to happen.
Really, these trees are in Murgon’s CBD and the whole town’s population have probably been passing by them for years, maybe decades. But did anyone notice one was going to split in half? No, not until it happened. Is that a poor reflection on Murgonites? No, I don’t think so. But now it’s happened, Council has got on to the problem fast.
Hopefully they will replant with a smaller native tree or shrub.