A large eucalyptus branch fell on Dr. Susan Reynolds’ car last week as she drove west on Sunset Boulevard, cracking her BMW’s windshield. ’This huge branch just missed killing me by seconds,’ said Reynolds, who has lived in Pacific Palisades since 1986. The incident occurred at 3:15 p.m. on June 1, between Las Lomas and Muskingum. ’I was driving in the opposite direction,’ said Sotheby’s International realtor James Respondek, who came to stop when he saw Reynolds standing in the middle of the road in apparent shock. ‘I pulled her car off the road to a little alley and had her sit down. She could’ve been killed.’ Firefighters arrived and cleared the branch from the road. According to Respondek, Reynolds’ convertible had a cracked windshield, holes poked in the doors, and the front end was smashed. Repairs were estimated at $17,000. ’I thought it [my life] was over,’ said Reynolds, who was uninjured. ‘But maybe we can trim these trees so that someone else doesn’t have to face what I did.’ She wondered why a tree would suddenly shed a branch, where there was no wind, rain or recent storm. ‘What’s the condition of these trees [along Sunset]? When was the last time they were maintained?’ she asked. According to Ron Lorenzen, assistant chief forester of the L.A. Urban Forestry Division, the city is currently on a 20- to 25-year tree-trimming cycle. (The basic recommended cycle by arborists is seven years, but this varies from tree to tree.) The city has more than 700,000 trees, but none have been trimmed in the 2009-10 cycle because the contracts have not yet been awarded, said Lorenzen, who is hopeful this can still happen before the July 1 fiscal year ends. He said that any tree can fail and that there is no one reason. When he heard that Reynolds was driving her car when it was struck by the branch, he said, ‘That’s extremely unusual.’ Reynolds is hiring an attorney to deal with the pending case against the city.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
