Name: With thousands of trees felled by Monday’s storm, residents of hard-hit neighborhoods lament lost shade and greenery: ‘This is going to be very devastating’
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With thousands of trees felled by Monday’s storm, residents of hard-hit neighborhoods lament lost shade and greenery: ‘This is going to be very devastating’

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AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneAug 14, 2020 at 12:06 pmLloyd Peters used to awaken in the cooling shade of a 100-year-old oak tree.But now his mornings begin in a blaze of unfiltered sunlight, and his apartment — on the top floor of a Roger’s Park three-flat — is so hot he turns on the air-conditioning, even when outdoor temperatures are in the 70s.AdvertisementThe tree that cooled Peters’ building is gone now, felled by Monday’s storm, along with so many of the stately oaks and maples that sheltered his historic neighborhood.“Walking through this neighborhood on a sunny day, there’s a night-and-day difference,” said Peters, 34, a delivery driver. “The sun is just beating down, and there’s just the depression that comes with seeing all the trees snapped.”AdvertisementThe Chicago region is still assessing the damage caused by a major storm Monday, but the city has received 4,000 emergency calls about tree damage, officials say, and the Forest Preserves of Cook County report that thousands of additional trees have been seriously damaged. Local experts said they don’t yet know if any trees of historic significance were felled, but somewhat younger trees in the 150- to 200-year-old range were among those harmed or destroyed by the storm.Chicago’s deputy commissioner for the Bureau of Forestry, Malcolm Whiteside Jr. said crews were working 16-hour days to remove the debris, which includes branches, split trunks and whole trees ripped out of the ground by their roots.“This is going to be very devastating, especially in Rogers Park,” Whiteside said.“I’ve seen one block where every tree was taken out, so that’s going to be very barren.”Whiteside appealed to residents and organizations to plant more trees, both to help the environment and to promote natural beauty. It costs the city about $525 to plant a tree and care for it for two years.At least 15 tornados touched down in northern Illinois on Monday, including one in Rogers Park, according to the National Weather Service.The loss of trees due to Monday’s storm pales in comparison to the deaths of 13 million local trees due to the emerald ash borer, according to Melissa Custic, Chicago Region Trees Initiative specialist at the Morton Arboretum. But she, too, said Monday’s storm was a significant blow.“(Trees) are wonderful, they’re beautiful, but they’re also providing a lot of benefits,” Custic said.AdvertisementOne of the benefits is that they reduce the temperature in the area, with studies showing there’s a 3.4-degree temperature difference, on average, between the area under a city tree and an adjacent area of direct sunlight, Custic said.“Heat is a huge problem in cities, and in Chicago in particular,” Custic said.Trees also clean the air, filter the water that runs through them and reduce flooding, Custic said. There are studies that indicate that having a view of trees or other nature may or improve school performance.“Trees are pretty vital for our mental health,” Custic said.She recommended that residents water injured trees and plant new ones to restore the leaf canopy. In weeks of little or no rain, it’s a good idea to water injured trees once a week, she said. Pick any area under the canopy of branches and give the tree about 5 gallons of water for every inch of diameter, or a few 5-gallon buckets in most cases. The next week, water in a different spot.Lombard resident Mary Marshall, 71, said that in the past, if you were out walking on a sunny day, you could feel the temperature drop upon entering her neighborhood — there were that many mature shade trees. But Monday’s storm hit Marshall’s neighborhood hard, felling three of the four tall oaks in her front yard.AdvertisementThe trees were all older than her 1927 English Tudor home, she said, and were among the attractions when she and her husband bought their home. “You get very attached to your trees,” she said, and because they were on private property, she and her husband had to pay for cleanup.She looked out the front window, beyond the spot where one of her trees pulled out part of the sidewalk going down, to survey damage on her block. Looking maybe six houses down the street, she could count eight trees that had been felled.In addition, she said, part of the street was still closed due to fallen trees, and other nearby streets have sustained similar damage.Some of the worst damage to the Forest Preserves of Cook County was in the southeast. Calumet City, the Thornton-Lansing area and the Sauk Trail Woods Forest Preserve were hit hard, according to John McCabe, director of the Department of Resource Management. That area hasn’t seen a storm of Monday’s magnitude in seven or eight years, McCabe said.AdvertisementHe said 500 to 600 trees in public spaces such as picnic areas were seriously damaged, and thousands of trees in the woods were also harmed or destroyed. Among the trees that were felled or lost limbs were 150- to 200-year-old white oaks near Sauk Lake. Those trees are old, but they’re not considered trees of great significance, said McCabe. The Forest Preserve is home to trees in the 300-year-old range, many of them also white oaks.Cleanup was in full swing this week, with Whiteside saying the way trees fell in Rogers Park was a testament to the power of the twisting winds that ripped through the neighborhood.Trees fell not only from west to east, as would normally be expected, but from east to west and north to south, he said.Emergency cleanup in Chicago should wrap up by about the end of next week, Whiteside said, with workers removing the remaining debris in the next week or so after that.Much of the wood retrieved throughout the region will be processed in chippers to form mulch, Custic said.AdvertisementChicago will use a wood chipper the size of a semitruck that is affectionately known as “The Beast.” The Beast will be deployed in Rogers Park and in a parking lot on the Southwest Side, at 87th Street and Kedzie Avenue, Whiteside said.Peters said he spent much of Tuesday helping to clean up the debris in his neighborhood with other residents, local businesses and the nonprofit My Block, My Hood, My City. His muscles were aching, but he was in good spirits as he joked about the likelihood that a tornado would have struck Chicago.“You know how the Cubs won the World Series? It was similar to that,” he said.But the mood turned somber when he talked about the way leaves normally fill the summer sky in his neighborhood, creating cool places to sit and walk.“That all changed pretty much in an instant,” he said. ”If you look northbound on Greenview, a street that was lined with trees, every single tree had its top pruned, and this was in the course of 30 seconds, when that tornado was going through here.”AdvertisementSteve Johnson contributed. Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneAug 14, 2020 at 12:06 pmLloyd Peters used to awaken in the cooling shade of a 100-year-old oak tree.But now his mornings begin in a blaze of unfiltered sunlight, and his apartment — on the top floor of a Roger’s Park three-flat — is so hot he turns on the air-conditioning, even when outdoor temperatures are in the 70s.AdvertisementThe tree that cooled Peters’ building is gone now, felled by Monday’s storm, along with so many of the stately oaks and maples that sheltered his historic neighborhood.“Walking through this neighborhood on a sunny day, there’s a...

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The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the 6th highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.

With thousands of trees felled by Monday’s storm, residents of hard-hit neighborhoods lament lost shade and greenery: ‘This is going to be very devastating’

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