Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming

Eric Frei

I have been watching the weather, the dams are overflowing and the huge Wivenhoe is at 98.5% as I type, upstream Somerset has had the plugs pulled for some time and is spilling into Wivenhoe.

Batten down the hatches, get the roof and gutter/downpipes cleaned and keep the back yard clutter free in case strong winds/cyclones hit. We are in for a heck of a summer and with dams at capacity flooding is a real risk.

It's been wetter than usual and the 2 week school holidays have been wet, next weeks forecast is more showers and possible thunderstorms ... it's on people, and it ain't even our wet season yet, traditionally February is our wettest month I think.

Got trees in boggy areas, in unshielded areas where wind can hit them easily, have them inspected. I see many trees are very heavy in their foliage and branches due to the rain boom, a fuller canopy means a greater sail effect, more stress on branches and roots. Good rains, warm weather and just add the magic ingredient ..... WIND!

Major wet season tipped for Queensland as Pacific and Indian ocean weather patterns combine | Courier Mail

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Eric Frei

Brisbane and surrounding regions copped it alright.

Here's what Wivenhoe looks like letting out some water.

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Apocalypsse

Alright boys, surfs up.

I wish the Victoria damns were that full. Apparently we are getting ads telling people to wash their cars at home, theres no excuse!

Garry Brockley

I saw an advert for a canal system going from queensland down through nsw and into vic to supply the inland areas with water.

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Eric Frei

If it's going to Vic then it'd be our sewerage!

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Done it

That was the Bradfield scheme,1933. John Bradfield (engineer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Looks like this guy thinks he invented it.Engineer proposes $9b plan to divert North Queensland river water to parched areas via canal | Courier Mail

That Wivenhoe video looks like Warrgamba up until not long ago. They used to open the flood gates fairly often then, I don't think it'll ever happen again.

It was good for the river, too many people here now.

Eric Frei

Serious, the govt here wanted to recycle our sewer water and stick it in that dam (wivenhoe).

Meanwhile mother nature came to the rescue, dang good luck and saved us from drinking recycled toilet water.

Southeast Queensland dam levels to guarantee drinking water until 2021 | Courier Mail

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Apocalypsse

Pshaw, we take the good stuff. Why do you think the country folk dislike the metro folk?

Eric Frei

Finally people are paying attention and listening. I even comment in my Tree Reports about the increasing severity of the weather in the region, it's nothing new and that link has a PDF in it dated 2001 warning us.

When the soil is wet, like it is now after 4 consecutive weeks of showers and rain periods all you need is high winds to see some tree failures.

Here's one that happened in Bardon yesterday, decent sized tree, healthy, was a council footpath tree and hit the house across the road and took out the street wires.

Source: Wild winds cut power in southern Queensland - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


But back to the weather, interesting how the article below explains a wet cycle, 30 year cycle, La Nina etc. The PDF in this post dated 2001 also said the last 25 years have been too quiet around these parts, I know that December 2007 the drought broke and it's been wet since.

Expert warns that cyclones, rain and flooding are on the way | Courier Mail

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S.O.P

That was a street tree!?

How much area did it have for its roots? Hard up against the road and fell away from it?

On further inspection, it fell across the road. Still interested in the lie of the land.

Eric Frei

If I knew where it was in Bardon I'd go see for myself! Just working off news reports.

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Garry Brockley

Look at thebase of the tree that was left!!!
the cambium looks like it has been repeatedly wippersnipped away and has been dieing back on this side.

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Eric Frei

If I have time tomorrow I'll hunt down that location, Bardon is a small place.

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Eric Frei

Act of God, a term used by many. There's some banter that when wind exceeds say Force 8 then tree failures are an Act of God because even healthy non defective trees fail, however that is not true, read The Body Language of Trees pages 149 to 154. Also not many trees did fail, and trees nearby did not fail so one must investigate as it is likely the tree was defective.

We've got some great old threads here about it, and about the types of people who ignore blatantly defective trees (or trees that have had their root zones violated) waiting for them to fail then claim it on insurance.

Fallen trees| negligence vs Act of God

Ignore it then claim insurance!

The tree fell at approximately 6.15am Saturday 16 October 2010

From the picture above it was hard to determine exactly what was going on with that tree as the basal area of the tree was hidden behind the tree in the foreground, it was a call I made it was a footpath tree based on the Koppers log fence.

I did locate the tree today around 1.30pm and spent 1 hour there. I did speak with both Mr and Mrs home-owner. They have been living there about 2 years, not long after they moved in they contacted Brisbane City Council about removing the tree as it was leaning toward their home, BCC advised the tree was fine and it remained.

You'll now view this event through the eyes of an arborist with good detail and great pictures.

In the picture below note the bottle-brush tree behind the house was broken also.



From the base of gum tree to the house wall was 17m as per the picture below. Also look very carefully and notice there was no soil heave and no long roots attached as you'd typically expect with a soil failure.... for comparison I have put in a picture from this post.





Now in this picture we have some measurements. The tree was very close to the edge of the bitumen road. The yellow circle is where the tree was, the vertical red line is the edge of the bitumen road. From the edge of the bitumen road toward the park there was 3.9m wide of compacted road base (which was around the trunk of the tree) and then there was 0.7m of soil to the Koppers log fence and obviously soil beyond that into the park. This is important because that area is used for parking and you can see my trailer right up the top if you look carefully. It is reasonable to assume that the none of these things is an Act of God but a human Act of Roadworks.



In fact, here's a look the other way, notice the car parked the other side of the stump location, this confirms the location as a parking area. The second picture shows the same situation just up the road.

Also the log length is about what the width of the road is, so they likely cut it and moved it there so cars could get through. Where I measured the DBH is about right as there is a butt log aprroximately 1.5m long. So the DBH of the tree is 0.8m and it's height is over 25m but unable to exactly tell as I didn't go over fences and into backyards looking for debris.





According to AS4970 trees have a Structural Root Zone (SRZ) and a larger root zone which has finer roots to absorb water and nutrients and sustain the trees life processes called the Tree Protection Zone (TPZ). I built an accurate online calculator and lets use the DBH for the SRZ calculation too just to be conservative.

The tree has an SRZ of 3.01m as a radius from centre of trunk.
The tree has a TPZ of 9.60m as a radius form centre of trunk.

We know the tree was there first (before the road). When they build a road they usually raise the grade after levelling and scraping. The butt log certainly shows signs of grade change, note the unusual inward taper which is actually around 0.8m above the root flare. I estimate between 200mm and 400mm fill up the trunk of the tree compared to original grade, and it was bitumen and compacted road base right up to the trunk .... certainly not an Act of God.



So lets have a look at those roots. They have the common white marbling effect of fungi but the wood is dry and hard, some fungi do that and the wood turns brittle. Look above at the comparison picture when you see soil heave and roots bending, not here. The tree pops over like a mushroom, root failure, caused by mankind.

Some will argue that AS4970 only came out last year but prior to that I was using Dr Kim Coders numbers and a general rule of thumb of 3m from the trunk for an SRZ and 10X DBH for a TPZ. About the only loose soil around that road and parking bay was directly beneath the tree.

Now after the New Farn Park falling tree fiasco and the $90,000 spent on diagnostics which clearly didn't bring a answer forth one must ask .... why are these violations of root zones permitted? Even after diagnostics at New Farm park trees continued to fall, they had Resistograph tests, Picus tests, hydrovac, airspade etc, some were pruned heavily with large wounds and hey .... 7 months or so later they fell over too! Apparently there were grade changes many years ago.

Here's a copy of what I wrote in a tree report the weekend just passed about other trees in the similar situation on a private premises.

Tree roots need air, water and nutrients to survive. When fill is placed over tree roots the most common
problem is lack of air leading to suffocation. Another problem is rainfall takes longer to permeate through
the soil or simply doesn't get down to the roots. The fine hairy root system of the tree barely visible to the
human eye is what absorbs water and nutrients, often it dies off easily and is damaged through compaction.
Tree roots also have gaseous exchange and exudates, soil biota around roots work with the tree and dramatic
changes or foreign fill significantly change that biota which can have detrimental impact upon the tree.
Root tissue/bark and trunk tissue/bark are different and soil up the trunk of the tree can create decay. Trunks
of trees have tiny holes called lenticels which offer gaseous exchange, when soil covers them pathogens can
enter and invade the cambium.
Adventitious roots can grow from the trunks of the trees which can keep the tree reasonably green and
healthy however the original root system buried under fill often dies and decays creating a stability issue, the
tree looks OK but may fail as the anchoring roots are rotten.



The picture below puts the other trees down the road into perspective, and they are not as large in DBH.



Lets have a closer look at a couple .... how buried is this one?



And here's two sides of another.





And after all of this if you are still sceptical, then you need to read the thread and watch the video on why and how we managed to remove a huge healthy (protected by Brisbane City Council) gum tree in 2010 on a vacant block.

Landmark Tree Felled| Brisbane Council Blunder

Not only is the weather a wake up call for this council but their tree practices too! This case is an Act of Negligence, the other people up the road should be concerned.

And Galbee, that other tree in the park, well there's a few sad ones nearby, in fact not far from this tree is a dual leader tree in the grassed area, it's sick, buried and just waiting ...... But here's a pic of the one you noted the whipper snipper markings etc ...... it's like half of the circumference has cambium missing but it's a habitat stump.

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S.O.P

Fascinating.

I think if the Insurance company doesn't pay, with your detective work, they certainly have a case.

And so does the Energy company, with the next 3-4 trees potentially to give their lines another stretch.


This may be an Act Of God or poor waterways management:

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Garry Brockley

Those pictures are priceless.....
So the road builders have cut and compacted the roots and buried the base of the tree 0.8m above the root flare, cars regularly park around these tree bases further compacting and damaging the root system and the council is crying act of god.
I don't see the council having a leg to stand on legally. they are always trying to wriggle out of thier responsibilities.

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Eric Frei

Funny how when a tree (especially that size) is on your property council dictate TPZ's and Covenants that consume 100's of square metres of your land, yet for them, she'll be right, just scrape and compact road base, bitumen, it's all good and we'll all pat ourselves on the back for being that great GREEN COUNCIL.

Now they may try to worm out of it like the typical slime balls they are by crying ..... IGNORANCE. "It was years ago, they didn't know back then" etc etc .... but the fact is when you do know and choose to ignore it then you are negligent.... and they do know because as long ago as 2005 I have been telling them over and over like a broken record.

The BCC and State Government are clenching their bum cheeks (so tight they could crack open macadamia nuts) all day long worrying about this years storm season, now we all know from experience that trees cause huge amounts of damage in storms, especially BIG TREES near houses (contrary to what any greenie tree hugging fool says ). You'd think they'd inspect and do some mitigation works on trees within striking distance of homes/carparks etc that have had their SRZ's violated with roads, pipes, drains etc.... but that's being proactive, bit hard to adjust to for a place that runs around pissing on fires, like no water, no electricity, long hospital waiting periods, Gateway Carpark road etc etc etc.

I often laugh driving around when the very occasional car goes past with that little slogan on their number plate, "The Smart State". Like the NAPLAN tests, results show they are dumb and corrupted.... caused by the inbred arrogance and self praise ..... simply too many yes men.

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Garry Brockley

Well they are going to have to wake up soon because i predict alot of cases against them when we get the next big storms, then what are they going to do? heads in the sand or get proactive they have the people the rescourses and the funding if they compare it to the millions that it's going to cost to fix the infrastructure again and again.

i just hope they don't go the other way an try to ban all trees from public areas as some idiot will no doubt recommend.

just be sensible about things! if work is carrie out around trees check what, where, how much and was it to standard.

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Jeff Darby

Hi All,
This is a sad situation, if BCC is aware of the possibility of the trees stability regardless of who did the work near or around them they have a Duty of Care to the public, so you, me and Joe Resident are safe in public places To make sure they are not a threat to human life or property.

If some body gets hurt by these trees, the emu approach to the problem will only get them deeper into the poo with the judical system, however if they can show to the courts they have been taking steps to deal with the trees with a logical approach to their removal and actually documented these actions their liability lessons greatly.

So crying act of god now that this thread is active, well it wont wash.

Duty of Care, people, Duty of Care !

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Member: Australian Tree Association

Join the Australian Tree Association...Have your voice heard !

Arboriculture, A life long study for some, a passing phase for others

© Jeffrey J Darby 2011

S.O.P

It won't be too long before every tall tree within 30 metres of a property will be removed, to avoid any litigation. Risk won't be measured, it will be destroyed.

It's writing on the wall.

Question is, will Council(s) actually use and enforce AS4970 to protect trees already in position?

jmcg.insight.gardens

Good work Eric,

a subject that needs to made clear to the general public, and especially to Councils, buried trees are a hazard to public safety.

The picture with the two red rings on the trunk showing the extent of constriction to the trunk due to soil is quite clear, even for an amateur to see. Must have been buried for some time. And quite deep, how did some council member of staff not notice this, the tree was inspected and deemed safe was it not?

What I liked is the second photo of the rot caused by the trunk being buried. Nice shot, and one I will show to some people I am having trouble with in regards to burying trunks. They just will not listen! I'm talking about public safety here as well..............

This is a problem that is obviously an act of lack of duty of care, not an act of god.

Well I think the owners of that property have a case now to take further............

Eric Frei

I believe they are obligated to do so. Sadly it took AS4970 to spell it out in some official form what was already accepted amongst arborists.

Lets look at things another way, parallel thinking:-

New OH&S regulations state that at heights greater than 3m regardless of roof pitch either fall prevention railing at the roof edge, or fall arrest harness system, scaffold etc is to be used. But Joe Blow of Cowboy Gutter Cleaners gets his ladder out, climbs up on the 5m high 2 story roof and walks around cleaning the gutters for $50, he claims the roof and house was their before the new OH&S rule, is he right in ignoring the new rule?

The point is they know now and need to act.

The deterioration of trees especially to fungus take years, most of mankind thinks in human time not tree time. To humans these day 5 years in the future is long range forecasting, to trees, it's nothing.

I've written enough about how the current methodology of tree protection and saving is BS, often (and including AS4970) the TPZ's are actually designed to expedite the demise of the tree. Some bean counter gives themselves a big tick for saving X trees on a site, but in 10 years time most are being removed as they are dead etc but whose counting now? No-one.

Why doesn't AS4970 really work that well either you ask?

Well here's an old post of mine when AS4970 was in draft form.

If you haven't got the picture yet I'll explain once more. AS4970 takes a snapshot of the tree now and does not make allowance for it's growth.

Running the current figures (not draft figures) for the tree in that quoted post it looks like this:-

For a 0.3m DBH tree it would get a 3.6m RPZ which is 40.72m2
For a 1.0m DBH tree it would get a 12.0m RPZ which is 452.39m2

So as you can see the smaller tree gets less than 10% of the larger trees allocation, so do you expect it to get as large or reach senescence earlier?

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S.O.P

Make sense. Perfect sense. Did you submit that to the draft?

But I could drive around right now and see large Eucalypts having their SRZ messed with on developer's land.

These trees will never fit in to the plan, I don't believe anyone is enforcing even the current legislation where I am. An arborist pointed a job out to me today, a nearly finished development with buildings encroaching on 20m Eucs on the main frontage. Artist's impression of finished project conveniently had the trees missing from the picture.

They have their death sentence signed and it will be delivered in 3-5 years.

Tall trees have no place in suburbia and no one wants to change practices to keep them. Without a value, they cost more than they return.

Eric Frei

I hear you and believe you.

"They cost more than they return" is a very interesting statement, I like it, not because I'm going to either disagree or agree but because it makes us think about the cost of having them vs the return they give.

The real tangible return they give is hard to measure but some of it has been measured, not by one eyed people but objectively with data.

trees lower energy bill| $25 a year| Big deal?

But what we have here is council owned trees whose damage is being paid for by private people. We have, contrary to Lord Mayor Campbell Newman's perspective, a council whose revenue is raised by fees and taxes (certainly unlike a business) passing off their green agenda's failures onto the private sector.

Some tree hugging fools believe that large trees actually help in severe storms, apparently the trees catch debris, slow wind speed, dissipate rain etc .... I have even heard them say that in the middle of a forest it's not windy as the volume of trees provide shelter.

But the urban forest is nothing like a natural forest, rainforest or especially a pine forest plantation or similar. There's no way a natural euc forest is anything like a radiata forest a year from being harvested. They are comparing chalk to cheese.

Urban forests have clearings for buildings, building envelopes, roads, streets, pipes and trenches etc. Urban forests create wind funnels and isolated trees. Urban forest have diversity and monoculture is rare.

So do not compare your home in The Gap to that of being in the middle of a pine forest.

Have you ever seen a 100' tall gum tree with many branches below roof height? I haven't, most shed them (another hazard but they did have them once) so what protection to the roof, walls and windows does just a trunk offer compared to say a dense (you cant see through it) Camellia or Lillypilly that's 15' tall? If the just above roof height trees fail they wont do damage, they may also just lean against the house and provide more shelter.

In the storm belts of USA the scientists have discovered that the urban forest actually may contribute to CO2 as the damage it takes year after year exceeds the good it makes!

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Garry Brockley

Thats a going to be controversial in certain circles, i see many greenies up in arms about that one.... fudging the figures to try to prove you wrong.

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S.O.P

$25 from one study aimed at electricity use is tangible.

I've removed 9 7m Casuarina's off a boundary because the owner believed it was affecting his Hot Water System, making him turn the booster on earlier and turning off later per year. He may have been right, but maybe he would of used his aircon more to compensate?


http://www.treenet.com.au/images/sto...20livesley.pdf


Both things I just happened to read the other night. All from single POV's, but still tangible. Tangible from a arboricultural/horticultural perspective, but try and explain those things to anyone else and the stares will be blank.

I understand the relationship between developers, council, money and rates but without any value prescribed to existing trees, their placement, even if they are 50 years old, it's like they don't exist.

Which causes this Bardon thing. If the tree and its needs don't exist, roads, for example, which are important, override everything.

That said, the way we have everything set up, Eucalypts anywhere near houses will all be gone. It's in the too hard basket.

PDF on the shrinking urban yard

Garry Brockley

The biggest problem is we are dealing with mistakes from our parents generation, with systems and ideas that are decades behind, therefore the likelyhood of fixing these problems is very low!
it is set to go on for a very long time because no-one wants the responsibility of a complete overhaul of the system, plus if any one does try to change the system people will just shout them down because they are scared of change whether it is needed or not.

how can you change the system when the people at the top that are running it can only see one way of doing the job and thats the way it's being done.then you have budgets to deal with and pressure from other sectors to conform.
We all love to think we make a difference but in the long run not many of us actually in the grand scheme of things make any discernible difference at all .

sorry that was a deep post wow

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Eric Frei

Yes it is regardless of how people try to water it down.

Tangible meaning.

You have added a quote but failed to provide information to confirm it, methodology is important because passing off theoretical values (like many tree valuations) just doesn't cut it for me regardless of the author, so more information required and I could not find it in that PDF.

This case is about storms and trees, and the Bardon tree being looked upon with real tangible evidence. It is not about generalisations of the end of the world due to tree removals .... but hazardous trees need to be identified and dealt with. The issue of people compelled to live with a large tree they'd prefer gone or mitigated, whether compelled by VPO's or the tree's vicinity is a large topic for another thread, and many threads have touched on it here.

I suggest people read this thread and PDF in it.

If Queensland or Brisbane, like the hurricane belts of USA is going to be a high wind storm area getting worse in the future then it is prudent to examine what species of trees are suitable, what is not, what to look out for with trees and some better practices in caring for them.

We all know species that tend to fail before others, we all know the implications of failures and the "risk" does increase with size. If a 5m tall bottlebrush was uprooted in a storm the consequences are nowhere near as severe if at all compared to a 130' tree.

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S.O.P

Sorry.

http://www.treenet.com.au/images/sto...%20daniels.pdf

I didn't add the pdf to the quote, because they really don't quantify the numbers. It's like me saying that aesthetic value could be worth $10000 to house prices if the whole street is planted (which it might, or might not be).

Eric Frei

Exactly, the typical type of behaviour we see for the green cause.

The other PDF had this written. Again it's a typical broad statement and that US $25 real test showed how small energy savings really are. It's one thing to make these types of statements and another to actually provide solid proof, of course to do so they'd need identical houses with a control. I find that when an unsubstantiated statement supports the perspective of greenies or tree huggers they accept it at face value no problem, but when it's the other way around they want the world turned upside-down to verify it.

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