The same urban canopy that brought so much relief to the Bay Area in summer is now taking a winter toll when hundreds of trees, weakened by years of drought, collapse in relentless rain and wind — taking lives, buildings and roads.
“Like us humans, it takes a little time to recover from stress, lack of water and high summer temperatures,” said urban area ecologist Alessandro Ossola of UC Davis. “Some of our trees can’t adapt to newly wet soil and atmospheric conditions…they just aren’t able to cope when climate and environmental conditions change too quickly.”
In nature, fallen trees are not a problem, but an advantage. They renew the forest by providing a home for fungi, insects, wildlife and sunlit space for new seedlings.
But in neighborhoods they were destructive and deadly. On Tuesday, during the latest in a series of powerful atmospheric flow storms, trees across the Bay Area claimed the lives of five people – from all walks of life and different circumstances.
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In San Francisco, 36-year-old Ryan Taylor, visiting from Las Vegas, was killed by a fallen tree on Post and Polk streets. Qiaoying Han, 55, of San Francisco, was waiting at a bus stop near 23rd Avenue and Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park when a large branch snapped in the wind and landed on her.
Walnut Creek-based attorney Thomas Huster, 79, was killed while driving home from dinner with his wife at Rossmoor Seniors’ Community when a gum tree crushed their Tesla. In Portola Valley, 29-year-old Jesus Ivan Cruz had just finished a plumbing job when a tree fell on his white van on Alpine Road west of Interstate 280. On Lake Merritt in Oakland, Louisiana, a native of Tyrone Butler, who was devoted to church and music, was killed in his tent.
At least three others have died from falling trees since the storms hit northern California late last year, including a 2-year-old child.
CHP vehicles block traffic on Alpine Road in California’s Portola Valley where a falling tree struck a truck, killing it, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Trees have also damaged homes, crushed cars, blocked roads and downed power lines. Arborists are struggling to keep up with demand.
“Every day we had one emergency after another,” said Blair Glenn of the Saratoga Tree Service. This week, Glenn and his crew worked like aerial surgeons with ropes and chainsaws, removing a sequoia from an elegant Mediterranean home and an Atlas cedar from a church. “I have a list of 20 other calls and I can’t get them all. And a lot of those jobs are pretty tricky.”
In Concord, Shelley Mack listed her losses in the winter: A gazebo. koi pond. Fences. animal enclosure. water pipes. A PG&E transformer and power lines. A car port. part of a terrace. A Ford Fusion Hybrid car. A white SUV.
“Every time it rains, we freak out,” said Mack of BBB Pet Rescue, where nine out of 40 eucalyptus trees have fallen this winter – and the rest are leaning dangerously. With her elderly landlady unable to pay for the tree felling and no help available from the city, county, Red Cross, or FEMA, she is desperate to raise funds.
Some of the region’s greatest trees have met their fate. The giant oak tree was lost at V. Sattui Winery in Napa Valley, where thousands of visitors once picnicked. A venerable stone pine tree – a stronghold for generations of children – also fell in Mitchell Park in Palo Alto. Stern Grove in San Francisco lost about 120 trees.
Winds tore off the trunk of one of the oldest plants in the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens, a sequoia that grew before the campus was founded. As it fell, it struck an ancient horse chestnut tree.
“A historic tree has wiped out another historic tree. There’s splinters and logs everywhere,” said Andrew Doran, the garden’s director of collections. The storm also claimed an endangered Picea spruce, part of the garden’s only Parana pine, an unusual species of eucalyptus and a gumleaf cone shrub native to southern Africa.
A strong prevailing wind with saturated soils can eventually overcome a root system’s anchorage, especially if a tree has been stressed by drought, said Dave Mason, spokesman for the East Bay Regional Park District.
Even healthy trees can be damaged by sustained winds in excess of 50 miles per hour, experts said. But wind from unusual directions can cause damage at lower wind speeds. Short gusts of wind can snap trunks if there is a weak point.
Branch breakage may not be a bug, but a survival strategy for trees, said Mark Vande Pol, who has a decades-old native plant restoration project on his land in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He said that some trees, such as For example, a genetic variant of the living coastal oak, bark “teeth” appear to be designed to fall off under extreme stress.
A massive fir tree sheared off a bedroom at Don Saputo and Dani Piserchio’s home on Bear Creek Road in Boulder Creek on Tuesday. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Heavy rains and winds are particularly problematic for some large evergreen tree species, which leave their leaves “on” during the winter storm season, experts said. The leaves store water and act as sails for fast winds. The dense canopies of oak and horse chestnut trees also trap snow, causing chaos during February’s storm. In contrast, deciduous tree species are significantly less susceptible to weather damage.
However, according to Matt Ritter, a professor of botany at Cal Poly, no particular species tips over more often than others. For example, although eucalyptus has a bad reputation, there is no data to back it up. Their problems are only more obvious because they’re so widespread, he said.
“We’re moving on,” Doran said as he plans how best to restore UC Berkeley’s iconic garden. “It’s a tremendous loss, and we’re emotionally attached to plants. But it paves the way for a whole host of other things.”
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