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A calm day, a crack of fate - great oak suddenly splits
St. Petersburg Times ^ | July 19, 2005 | EMILY VASQUEZ

Posted on 07/19/2005 1:41:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

ZEPHYRHILLS - The lake at Zephyr Park was like glass early Monday evening as 63-year-old Nancy Booth and her two adult children sat at a picnic table beneath a great oak tree.

No rain, no wind, mostly clear.

Then, witnesses heard a horrible crack. The oak at the water's edge was splitting.

Booth's children scampered out of the way, but one of the huge falling limbs pinned their mother to bench where she sat.

Booth's daughter, Caloie, ran to a passing van yelling for help.

The driver, 39-year-old Gary Killeen, having seen the tree fall, jumped out of the van and ran toward the table.

Nancy Booth still was alive, Killeen recalled, and her son, Glenn, was trying to lift the branch. The mother looked at Killeen.

"Please help me," he recalled her saying.

Then, she closed her eyes.

Killeen and at least a dozen other bystanders rushed to the scene and tried to lift the limb.

Minutes later, Booth's son told Killeen to stop. The limb couldn't be lifted, and Nancy Booth was dead, Killeen said.

Debbie Streets, who has walked the path around the lake nearly every night for a decade, said she often saw the Booths.

Streets didn't know Booth and her children by name, she said, but they always smiled as she passed.

It was about 6:30 p.m. Monday when she had passed the Zephyrhills family, sitting around the wooden table.

"I just started hearing the tree rip apart," Streets said. "You couldn't see anyone."

The crack was so sudden, Streets said, it seemed inexplicable.

"A hurricane came and didn't knock any trees down," she said.

Zephyrhills police Chief Russell Barnes said the great oak appeared to be in "good shape."

The tree was alive and mostly green except for a dead part in the center, but that was surrounded by good bark, he said.

The limbs that fell near the table were about a foot in diameter, Barnes said.

"For as long as that tree's been there, it could have happened at any time, it could have fallen in the middle of the night," Barnes said. "For (her life) to end like this is just ridiculous."

--Times staff writer Jamal Thalji contributed to this report.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: tree; yourtime
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To: John O
"God makes the plans. We just ride along"

Do you really think he gets involved on that level. How did it go?

"Let's see, in the 19th day of the 7 month of the 2005 years after the romans kill me/my son I will have an unhealthy rotten to the core tree break and fall on a woman sitting with her adult children... that's it!" "That's the plan. Yeah senseless tree death... that tops of all my creation and plans." "Perfect finishing touch."

Really???

God also gave us arborists, Department of Parks, the paper companies, DRCHIPPERs, termites, fires, carpenter ants, chain saws, logging companies, and most of all free will to sit where we want when we want.. even if it is the wrong place.. which every place is at some time or another.

I feel very bad for this woman's family, but do you really think it was all part of some ones original plans? Through the billions of years of earths history this is just a blip in time. I really don't know if it was chosen in advance.

Pray for the family who lost a wife, mother, grandmother, etc. to a very unfortunate ACCIDENT of nature and poor tree health. But this bizarre death a part of a loving God's plans?
41 posted on 07/19/2005 11:06:14 PM PDT by JSteff
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Not to mention the canopies the trees grow, limiting the light that gets to the ground, so undergrowth that rodents would eat gets limited, so the poor spotted owls don't have any rodents to eat, so they move away. Deowlization.


42 posted on 07/19/2005 11:19:56 PM PDT by 185JHP ( "The thing thou purposest shall come to pass: And over all thy ways the light shall shine.")
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
A calm day, a crack of fate - great oak suddenly splits

That's almost a haiku. Let's see:

On a most calm day
A great oak suddenly splits
What a crack of fate
43 posted on 07/19/2005 11:22:12 PM PDT by Rastus
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To: 185JHP

Yes. These trees are taking more than their fair share.


44 posted on 07/19/2005 11:52:54 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

;<)


45 posted on 07/19/2005 11:58:06 PM PDT by 185JHP ( "The thing thou purposest shall come to pass: And over all thy ways the light shall shine.")
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To: JSteff
to a very unfortunate ACCIDENT of nature and poor tree health. But this bizarre death a part of a loving God's plans?

So would you rather she have died at that same moment after a long painful struggle with cancer? or perhaps after being raped and dismembered while still alive by moslem terrorists? Death is death. It's the step we all have to take to get to our eternal reward (whatever that reard may be). If God chooses to have a tree fall on someone when it's their time to go who are you to say no?

God's plan for us changes daily as we either obey or disobey Him. That is, He sets a course for our life and constantly adjusts events around us to bring us to where He wants us to be. The only question is how much pain and suffering, or joy and triumph do we want to go through in order to get there.

I am not wise enough to know all the ramifications of this death. How will her kids react, or the people who live nearby, or all the people on FR who read about it. But God is.

46 posted on 07/20/2005 5:20:23 AM PDT by John O (God Save America (Please))
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
This story reminds me a book by Thornton Wilder..The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

This was a real event, where a bridge collapsed in eighteenth-century Peru killing five people. The bridge had been there for 100's of years so many felt that its collapse was an act of God. Wilder wrote about the people who died and tried to answer the question of why God would chose them.

47 posted on 07/20/2005 9:40:07 AM PDT by Dr._Joseph_Warren
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To: Dr._Joseph_Warren

We always want an answer.

Sometimes there isn't one.


48 posted on 07/20/2005 9:43:14 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
what a tragic way to go! my prayers go out to the family. Nancy was my aunt, and i am so sorry she is gone. I am having trouble with her loss myself. I came close to having a tree fall on me a few years ago. I took a walk, stopped for a few minutes to look around, then walked on. I heard a noise, and looked back to see the tree I was just standing under fall. I just don't know what to say, but I am glad that Glenn and Callie was not killed to. I am so sorry for your loss.
your cousin Callie Mallicoat
49 posted on 07/30/2005 12:31:14 PM PDT by restlesspirits (SEE YOU IN HEAVEN Aunt Nancy)
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To: restlesspirits

I'm so sorry.


50 posted on 07/30/2005 12:35:57 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
My sympathies to the family. Zephyrhills is only a few miles from me.

In Florida, high winds blow many big trees down, pines and hardwoods alike. The palms mostly just bend and lose fronds. A pine, three stories high and slim, crashed down on the house across the street from me after a recent storm. Luckily, it hit across the front entranceway and the roof corner with no damage.

It took over a month to cut that baby up in pieces (which were really heavy), remove the stump, haul everything away and remove literally millions of pine needles from a large area of the grounds.

We neighbors knew for years that this tree would fall eventually. Just a matter of which house it would fall on.

Unfortunately, throughout Florida, which is heavily wooded away from the coasts, many of the locals can't afford the cost of tree trimming labor.....and many have lost their lives, cars or roofs due to this very common financial circumstance. It could be my across-the-street neighbor didn't have available funds and were just trusting in luck.

Leni

51 posted on 07/30/2005 12:54:32 PM PDT by MinuteGal
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To: MinuteGal

Like time bombs waiting to go off.


52 posted on 07/30/2005 12:56:29 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Precisely.

Leni

53 posted on 07/30/2005 1:02:18 PM PDT by MinuteGal
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Virtually every mature hardwood that you see is hollow or rotten in the center.

No growth at all takes place in the center of any tree, young or old. Both the xylem and phloem are contained in the outer sections, just beneath the bark. This is why girdled trees die - their food source is cut off by whatever is binding the outside of the tree.

More large trees than you care to imagine are closer to collapse than not. If they are completely upright/reasonable symmetrical, then there's probably no worries.

But if they are previously damaged, leaning (like along a riverbank - in the story), infested with insects (especially wood-destroying insects) or subjected to unusual winds or stress - well, there could be trouble.


54 posted on 07/30/2005 1:09:19 PM PDT by The Coopster
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