GRAND RAPIDS, Mich: Mother Nature is all around us and we get to see a lot of her charm as we drive, but who is responsible for her upkeep?
"Could it fall? Will it fall? Eventually it will, which way is it going to go?" Jerry Byrne with the Kent County Road Commission said.
"It's a situation that really was beyond anybody's control," Byrne said.
He's referring to the incident on Tuesday on Grand River Driver. A tree fell, crushing a vehicle which killed the front seat passenger.
"The chances of two trees falling outside the right a way hitting that tree and knocking it in the road, probably one in a million, unfortunately there was a motorist going by at the same time," Byrne said.
So is the road commission in charge of these trees?
"There are literally millions of trees within the road right a way and to think somebody is responsible legally for all of those trees, I think that answer is no. Nobody is legally responsible for all those trees in the road right a way," Byrne said. "Within that road right a way if there's a dead tree that's precarious or an immediate hazard, we take it upon ourselves to take it down, but legally no, legally it's the travel portion of the road that we're responsible for."
So who is to blame?
"It's really nobody's fault, we had no knowledge of that tree. We didn't get a call. We did not observe that tree prior to it coming down. I truly don't think it's a case where you can put a fault on anybody," Byrne said.
Had crews known about the tree, it would have been on a removal list but Byrne said the tree as it stood, didn't pose an immediate threat. It was the other two trees that caused the third one to go down.
"The trees started off the right a way falling basically like a domino effect, tree to tree, and hit this tree and pushed it in the road."
If you see a dead tree that could fall and become a danger, call that that jurisdiction so personnel can assess the situation.
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