Kelowna, B.C., resident Giulio Di Palma had all kinds of emotions when he came home after work last month to find his front yard spruce tree half gone.
“I was shocked,” Di Palma said. “Disappointment, upset, violated.”
With its potentially dangerous proximity to power lines, FortisBC came in to prune the tree but Di Palma said the company did a lot more than that.
“It’s a total hack job,” he said. “I don’t believe that the limbs that are really on the low side should have been trimmed because you can see the way they swooped down. They’re nowhere near the wires.”
Di Palma lives in the Lower Mission area of the city and a few blocks away, a group of residents living on Fuller and Collett roads have similar concerns about tree-trimming in their neighbourhood.
“It just makes me feel sick,” said homeowner Gordy Charles. “The trees have been brutalized.”
Charles said he supports the safety-related tree trimming practice but not the way Fortis is handling it. He believes the company is not putting much thought into pruning the trees and instead just taking the easy way out but cutting way too much off.
“When you look at the work, you realize that some of it has absolutely nothing to do with protection of power lines, and some of it it makes you feel like nobody took any thought, there was no arborist involvement in what they did to the trees,” Charles said.
Charles has nearly two handfuls of trees on his property that were significantly pruned.
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“We have nine trees that are seriously stressed and we don’t know what’s going to happen to them,” Charles said.
Charles and his wife were away on holidays when Fortis came to do the job back in March.
Completely unaware, the couple wishes they had been given some notification.
“They need to do a very serious PR marketing notification process where they blanket the areas where they are coming to,” Charles said. “They know in advance when these people are coming via schedule. Let people know we are coming if you want to handle your own arborist do it now before we arrive.”
Rob Collins lives in the neighbourhood and is concerned that some of the trimmed trees now pose a safety risk.
“They’ve come in and they’ve cut off one side of the tree so now it’s like a sail,” Collins said. “So if there is a big gust of wind, there’s a potential that that tree will fall onto the resident’s house.”
In an email to Global News, FortisBC stated,”Safety is our priority when we trim trees. Trees falling on or touching power lines can cause power outages, energize nearby property and pose a fire risk.”
The email went on to say, “We engage with property owners and communities when it’s necessary to remove a tree, but less often with trimming given the widespread problem of trees growing into our lines. At any time, we have upwards of 15 tree trimming crews working in 10 communities.”
It added that, “Property owners are encouraged to plant a safe distance away from power infrastructure and rights-of way, and can also hire a utility-certified arborist to trim their trees away from lines before we’re required to trim for.”
Calling it an eyesore, Di Palma doesn’t want to keep his half-trimmed spruce, calling on Fortis to step up and do the right thing.
“They shouldn’t have done it this way and now that they have done it I feel they should take the tree out, finish the job,” Di Palma said.
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