“Honest to God, I’ve been involved in a lot of stupid stuff, but I didn’t know what happened,” said Kevin Gilbride, standing next to his crushed 2008 GMC Sierra pickup truck last week. On Jan. 14, Mr. Gilbride had just turned south on Wainscott Northwest Road from Route 114, headed to the Seafood Shop for some lobster bisque, when a 75-foot pitch pine fell on the roof of his truck.
“There were branches everywhere. The dogs were freaking out. I thought it was a plane or something.”
The truck caved in, and Mr. Gilbride got a cut on the top of his head. His windshield was smashed. The bed cover was punctured by a branch, still protruding from it, like a shark fin out of water, over a week later. His front door can close, but only with effort, as it’s now misaligned. The truck has 278,000 miles on it, and Mr. Gilbride no longer had collision insurance, only liability. The police report estimated $10,000 in damage.
“My insurance company said, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you at all. You need collision for something like that.’ “ If Mr. Gilbride is to recoup any of his loss, he must sue.
“Negative injuries at this time,” read the police report after Mr. Gilbride phoned them at 4:47 p.m. to report his damaged vehicle. They wanted to transport him to the hospital, he said, but he refused. However, in a claim against the town, which the town clerk’s office said was delivered to the town attorney on Jan. 22, Mr. Gilbride reported “Head cut, left neck into left shoulder, right jaw and teeth, lower back pain shooting down rear left leg.” Despite this, it could have been far worse.
The town attorney’s office would not comment on the claim.
Kevin Cobb, a highway project inspector for the town, was on the scene immediately after the accident. In a phone call, he said no town trees were involved and that the pitch pine in question was 38 feet from the western edge of the road. When it fell, it took out an oak tree as well, but the oak tree was 18 feet from the edge of the road, and Mr. Cobb said it didn’t hit Mr. Gilbride’s truck. “The west side property line is roughly 10 to 12 feet from the road edge,” he wrote in a later email, meaning the oak was six to eight feet onto private property. “Not that it really matters. The pine hit the truck.”
According to Mr. Cobb, both trees that fell were on a private property at 581 Wainscott Northwest Road, a house now under construction by Cruz Brothers and listed for $4,995,000. Ironically, while the tree was allegedly theirs, according to Kevin Cooper, the head of code enforcement for the town, the construction company was recently given a ticket for over-clearing its parcel, which sits in a water recharge district, by nearly 20 percent.
At present Mr. Gilbride has no plan to sue Cruz Brothers. “I’m sure Cruz Brothers has an old vehicle that I would trade before I sued anyone.”
“The town has taken down thousands of those dead beetle trees,” said Stephen Lynch, the highway superintendent. “We’ve been cutting down dead pines for three years now. You won’t find them in a town right of way. We worked weekends, sometimes late. The guys did it on overtime because they knew how dangerous it was.” Route 114, however, a state road, is a different story.
“Safety is always the top priority of the New York State Department of Transportation, and we are assessing the conditions of trees along State Route 114,” said Stephen Canzoneri, a spokesperson for the State D.O.T. It’s unclear why the state has not been as aggressive in removing the trees within the fall zone of the busy road.
“The state is not doing a good job,” said Mr. Lynch. “Look what happened to this poor guy. Thank God he didn’t get hurt. They’re on notice. If something happens, they don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“That’s a scary sight as you’re driving down,” Andy Drake, an environmental analyst in the town’s Land Acquisition and Management Department, said of Route 114. “We’ve done our best to identify possibly hazardous trees, but that said, any tree can fail at any time.” He said beyond the road right of way, the town has been looking for dead trees on private properties when their help is requested. Town contractors removed 50 trees from Route 114 in early 2023.
If the all the dead trees are removed, there will be large empty expanses along the roadsides. “We’ve replanted most of the affected areas on town roads,” said Mr. Drake. But what of private property? “We always recommend planting natives,” said Mr. Drake. “White pines are thriving, and that’s what we’ve usually been recommending. They act like traps for the pine beetles. But the next best thing is an eastern red cedar.”
