I live in the Sierras. We grow oaks and pines and such here. A neighbor about 100 feet away had a 100 foot tall pine tree in front of his house. Approximately 100. It had been raining hard for a couple days. 8 inches of rain fell. The ground was pretty soft.
I heard a chainsaw. Its Sunday, late morning. Why is there a chainsaw? Look out window. A man, by himself, is chainsawing this 100 foot tall tree. Then he cuts the safety notch. I can see this because it is pointed exactly our way. He is cutting this 100 foot tall tree down and its going to fall on us, 100 feet away, approximately. A maniac with a chainsaw and no crew is cutting down a tree to fall on our house. We call the police.
The police say they don't care about trees. They don't care about chainsaws. They say get off the phone. They say the city only cares about after the disaster. So logically speaking, if you shoot at a city employee and miss, its okay because you didn't hit them. I shall remember that. I now understand why the city cops have a bad reputation with the county. The Deputies actually care about preventing crime. The city just wants to document it.
The tree comes down and slams its top into the driveway of my neighbors house, about 5 feet from my property line, missing their phone box by 8 feet, crinkling the gutter on the front of the garage and bouncing wood off the garage door but not breaking it. My neighbor normally has his truck, full of gasoline, parked in a spot that is now full of two thousand pounds of pine tree that dropped at 100 mph. If it were 5 feet taller it would have hit the natural gas regulator and lit his house on fire in a huge explosion, and the tree was now on top of the shutoff valve and the electrical panel is right next to the gas, providing the spark. It would have burned down our next door neighbors house, and then ours because the gas was only 20 feet from us and the flames get big.
I'm amazed that the tree missed the neighbors house. It ripped branches off his fire maple, and will take expert trimming to save. I haven't seen if the pavement is cracked, or the sidewalk. Missing the house is expertise and luck in equal measure. The tree, 100 feet long, is now across the street. There's ways around it, but the police finally roll up, lights off, the beat cop annoyed that we'd call the cops for a mere madman cutting down trees. Then other crew members appear from nowhere and a work truck shows up. So do all our neighbors.
The owner of the tree across the street eventually comes up the street to explain that the tree had moved two inches due to the wet ground, suggesting it was going to tip over and fall, and that he was very afraid it would fall on his house or one of the neighbors so called in the emergency tree cutting crew. He did not THINK to tell any of us why, not even the man next door. I can see that would make it an emergency. Not telling the neighbors and hiring a lumberjack with a 5 foot long chainsaw, with no safety crew to indicate this was something other can a panicked homeowner about to make things horribly worse and destroy a neighbors house to save his own? D1ck move.
After the tree came down more people showed up and they started to saw off branches 16 inches across and 20 feet long. This was a big tree. They spent the rest of daylight cutting the branches back to the central trunk, then cut that up and brought in a logging truck to pick up the logs and carry them off. I doubt the crew knew or cared that the neighbors weren't told. That wasn't their job. That was the homeowner's job. He didn't call or walk across the street or next door and just watched this crew drop the tree away from his house. He was saved. Screw his neighbors.
This is the downside to dealing with retired people in a place full of heavy metal poisoning and dementia. The crazy is strong here. This is why I want to get a trailer and move elsewhere, frequently. Crazy is funny when you don't have to live with it. When its as simple as paying off your debts and hitching the trailer to the truck and pulling out of there for the next vacation spot and temporary job. I think that Community is reserved for people born there and never left. If you weren't born there, you can't be part of the Community, and community only extends as far as tiny towns (like here) where it is possible to know the same people for decades. If you aren't born there, you aren't one of us. You're just a Them, an exploitable resource. I will always be a Them everywhere I go. Small towns are always desperate and scheming so welcome Them for their money, until the money and goodwill runs out. Sacrificing myself for a community which plans to curb-stomp me when the time is right is incredibly stupid and self destructive.
I really wish people would think a bit more, but they don't. I am constantly disappointed by the actions of my species and my survival strategy is to keep moving. Staying in one place is asking for it.
UPDATE: We paced it off. The tree was 4 feet diameter at the base and 165 feet tall/long. We were 25 feet further. Considering we thought it was 100 feet tall and it was 65% larger (error), we were completely justified to be upset about this maniac dropping it without notice or consideration.
