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(Date Posted:13/08/2008 2:55 PM)
At around 2.25pm today, a large chestnut tree on the Common blew down in strong wind - it was old and very large. It fell into the path of traffic along Clapham Common Southside at the junction with Narbonne Avenue, and a builder's van unfortunately took the full brunt of the falling trunk. One person in the van died at the scene, and a second is seriously injured. Very sad news. I don't want to be all Daily Mail about this, but this tree had clearly been on its way out for a while - it had lost its leaves early this year and was obviously in poorer health than the neighbouring trees, in spite of the wet weather we have had for the past year or so. (Someone I know who has worked at the junction of CCSS and Narbonne Ave for nearly 50 years told me that he could see that it had recently become stressed and was dying.) With its proximity to such a busy road, surely Lambeth Council should have seen it as a potential hazard? As much as I love trees and the contribution they make to the landscape of the area, I don't think that a potentially dangerous one weighing several tons should have been allowed to remain where it did (but then, where on the Common would be considered safe anyway?). Maybe it was an unforeseeable freak accident. I don't really know.
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