A one-block stretch of Effie Street near Echo Park Avenue was closed off this morning as a city crew of Street Services workers sawed down a 40-foot high date palm. Supervisor George Pardo said a city arborist who had inspected the tree on Effie near Lemoyne Street at the request of a resident had determine that it had been diseased and in danger of falling. He pointed several spots on the trunk that appeared rotted. Not everyone was happy about seeing the palm cut down. Pardo said several residents had complained to him this morning, and one person emailed The Eastsider about her concerns:
“It seems thoughtlessly drastic to kill such a beautiful tree. Those grow so slowly, and as far as I know, of recent the city has NO MONEY to replant what they take down. So we have one less mature tree into the foreseeable future on Effie …”
Pardo did not know the age of the tree. But it had taken a crew of about five men more than 2-1/2 hours to saw most of it down. The crew still needed to cut it down to the base and then have the trunk mulched and hauled away.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I had the same issue when moving to echo park, there was these two lovely trees in front of our house, but there was times were big branches fell off and brought all the electrics lines down, and to avoid a big accident in the future like falling on top of our house or falling in a car, we decided it would be best to have them cut down, now we have grown other fruit trees… Safety Is always first.
I’ve had palms and trees all over my yard since we moved down here from over there. They’re hard climbing but after a few days you reach the top and it’s FULL OF EGGS! So many tree eggs up there hard to eat em all. But we did and some good firetrucks came and let me down. They even brought me a helichopper pilot and bracelet. Now we got apples growing day and night, feeding squirrels and any kids that walk by.
One time a palm fell on my foot and hurt for hours! Couldn’t even skate for hours! Then we looked for TV and it went away.
Hi Joan,
It’s your friends from the Sanitarium again. Now sweety, back away from the keyboard. That’s right. We’re going to take you to the fun place and give you the yummy blue gumdrops.
Yeah, it’s gonna be alright.
LOL….. i thought i was the only one that was weirded out by Joan’s comments…. I was like what the heck… lol