It’s the root of some nasty damage.
A massive tree snapped in half on a Ditmas Park residential street on Monday, crashing into the roof of a nearby home, knocking off the house’s second-floor gutters, and damaging a car parked in the property’s driveway, according to a passerby. But the toppled trunk could have caused even worse damage had it fallen in the opposite direction, the witness said.
“Luckily it fell into the yard, not the street or the sidewalk, because someone could have really been hurt,” said Donald Loggins, a lifelong area resident who lives around the corner from where the tree fell. “That thing was big.”
Loggins was walking his dog in the nabe around 3:00 pm when he heard a crunching sound that prompted him to head toward the noise, he said. It was very windy at the time, according to the local, who spotted the fallen tree at 27 Dekoven Ct. soon after hearing it snap.
“You couldn’t miss it,” Loggins said.
Fire department officers then arrived on the scene, which they blocked off with tape. And no one was injured in the fall, according to Loggins, who said he did not speak to or see the homeowner following the incident.
The severed trunk is a London plane, according to the local, who said the species — which is characterized by its camouflage-patterned bark and grows in parkland across the city — is common in the neighborhood.
And it’s not the first tree to come crashing down in Ditmas Park. Another crushed a parked car when it fell across the street from Loggins’s house a couple of years ago, he said, and the resident spotted several fallen specimen in the wake of superstorm Sandy. But this was his first time being so near to the action, he said.
“I have never been that close to one coming down,” said Loggins.
