Spending a few minutes on the BBC website and also Google it is quick to do a
summary on the few fatalities from trees. This year there are already at
least 4 fatalites from tree failures which are for reference: 11 Jan East
Sussex Bodiam car crushed; 22 Feb West Lothian van crushed; 6 May
Huddersfield limb fell in park and 20 May London pedestrian. (dates are
approximate based on the websites). Will we get to 5-6 this year - probably
yes given where we are at the moment! I have not included those who drive in
to trees or those who have fallen out of then either.
In addition to the actual fatalities there are a few 'near miss' stories
including parked cars that are written off and a caravan in South Yorkshire
flattened, not many injury stories - perhaps they are less dramatic in this
news/entertainment era! Of the near misses these are much less well reported
and probably happen on a more frequent basis on a national level than we may
think.
Of course it is not just lives that we are protecting from tree damage but
also property and infrastructure such as powerlines, railways, roads which if
damaged or blocked can have some pretty big knock on effects and related
wider economic costs. Why is there a focus on fatalities when on a crude
financial basis there are more expensive outcomes from tree failure.
H.> Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:25:05 +0100> From: trees@xxxxxxxxxx.co.uk> To:
uktc@xxxxxx.tree-care.info> Subject: Re: Beware of trees> > sean wrote:> >
Does this account for tree service related fatalities?> > > > No.> The data
that (for instance) the HSE SIM is based on, and what > presumably is
somewhere in the background of the BS8516 thinking, is > this figure of 5-6
members of the PUBLIC killed as a result of tree > failures.> The figure
could well be about right, but it does seem to me that we > should be keeping
tabs on it. And of course such tiny proportions will > always be subject to
relatively wide fluctuations - but even so, it is a > sort of fundamentally
relevant fact...
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