Hurricane Michael wake-up call: Time to take down problem pines, other trees | Opinion

Mike Ferrara | Your Turn

Show Caption Hide Caption Hurricane Michael: Tallahassee sees storm topple trees There have been some real close calls for residents.

The city of Tallahassee did an amazing job dealing with this latest weather event. I can't thank them enough and all the other crews that came in to assist. No one can fault the city for the response we've seen with restoring power to all but a few of us. We were only out five days.

But the future is now. While I also appreciate the city commissioners keeping everybody updated on a minute-to-minute basis with Facebook and email notifications on power being restored in all areas of town, I think it’s time that the city and the county started looking 45 miles to the west of us – Blountstown, Marianna, Panama City, Mexico Beach and the many smaller communities affected by a direct hit.

They need to address the problems that are the culprits of the majority of the utility outages in this city. The fact is, in the past two years we have had three major weather events, none of which produced sustained winds over 60 miles an hour, and only two with 70-plus-mile-an-hour gusts. We haven't had a real hurricane hit since Kate.

In my opinion, it’s time the city started thinking proactively.

Removing trees isn’t a popular topic in Tallahassee, and I feel the city is reluctant to go here. Removing pines and other diseased trees in the right of way and creating a low interest loan program so people can remove potential problems from their property need to be addressed.

Whether you subscribe to the notion that climate change is or isn’t real, these are no longer anomalies. They are becoming commonplace. I believe we are going to see more and more of this in the future.

These storms have created utility outages for a large portion of our community time and time again. One can only imagine what would happen to Tallahassee if we actually got a hurricane with 120-mile-an-hour winds. If what we are experiencing with 50 mph winds is any indication, it wouldn’t be just days with the policies in place now, but weeks, even months to restore downed lines and poles and put substations back online.

I think it’s time we took a long hard look at the old growth pines and water oaks in the ROW — trees that time and time again are probably causing more than a majority of the problems with electric service disruptions.

If the city doesn’t want to bury power lines, I feel it should do something to ensure that when we do get another 50 mph hour storm, the problems we have with losing power are not going take additional days and weeks while crews re-repair the same lines over and over again.

In my neighborhood, I’ve seen three intersections in the past two years get taken out three times by pine trees.

It’s hard to find the exact numbers and it’s even harder to find out exactly how much FEMA reimbursed the city for all of this. All that money, maybe even a fraction of that money, could be used to proactively replace trees that are taking out our electric service time and time again with ones that are more wind resistant.

At some point, you would think we would start looking at this stuff and come to the realization that some of these trees have to come down. One can only imagine how many millions of dollars the city has spent bringing in crews from around the country to restore power in the past two years or the millions of dollars in property damage that didn’t have to occur.

Not only that, but there are hundreds of locally owned businesses that might not have the cash reserves to stay solvent for a prolonged electrical outage. Should any of them fail, hundreds of local people may find themselves in unemployment lines, unable to pay their bills.

I know this isn’t a popular subject in this town, and I’m with everybody with loving all the trees and foliage.

The bottom line is that if that cold front had not stalled during Hurricane Michael, the damage to Tallahassee would have been catastrophic. The City and the County Commissions need to take a realistic look at all of this before the inevitable happens.

Because in my opinion, it’s not if the city takes a direct hit, it’s just when.

Mike Ferrara is a longtime Tallahassee resident and business owner.

Back story: The truth about trees?