If a Tree falls ...

So the question of the day is:

If a tree falls over the road and no one is there to see it (thank God) … did it really fall?

and

WHO will clear it away??

As we were driving out of town to take Blanca and Idalia home, heading towards Alejandria, someone from another truck yelled that a tree had fallen in the road and wasn’t passable.

They didn’t specify which road and there is a fork heading out of town – one road leads to San Francisco and most of the cantons, and the other road leads to Alejandria and a couple other cantons.  They also said it was a huge ‘amate’ tree that had fallen and Blanca said, there are no amate trees on the way to Alejandria. 

We kept going anyway.  I figured I would get them as far as we could go and they could walk from there and Cecilia and I would just turn around and head back.  We made it about ¾ of the way down to Alejandria.

And sure enough, there was a HUGE ceiba tree (like a kapok) laying across the road.  Actually, it wasn’t the whole tree – just ONE branch with lots of huge limbs.  Had the whole tree fallen, it would have wiped out the power pole on the side of the road.

as far as we could get

getting out to take a closer look!

So we stopped ... there was no other choice.  I wanted to get a closer look and take photos.  And Cecilia ran down the road to someone’s house and came back with axes.  Blanca helped out a bit.

We stayed put till the road was passable.  I got lots of photos and a video.  We waited out the cleaning crew. There were a few men from city hall and lots of people from Alejandria with machetes and axes hacking away at these huge limbs.  It was a slow, hot, muscle aching (I imagine) process.

This could have really hurt someone!

the poor tree ... it was a HUGE branch with many limbs. 

Or is that huge limb with many branches?

There were no power tools. Many of the branches were at least 12" wide and all were cut by machete and axe and hauled to the side by strong men. They did this under the hot ... dodging flying wood debris ... dodging everyone else's machetes ... avoiding bees nests ... (one brave man made a torch and burned a nest that was close to the ground after the fall.

This was amazing to watch them clear away the tree.  They had started not too long before we got there, and we were there about an hour.  Considering the tools on hand, I would say they did pretty rapid work.

This is the main reason I carry a machete in the Pastoral House pick-up truck.  Not that I could handle this type of tree fall – but in the past, we have had to clear smaller debris in our path!