Five Dangerous Trees: Accidents waiting to happen

At the intersection of Elvitigala Mawatha and High Level Road, at Kirulapone Junction, and towards the Nugegoda side is a small hillock on which is sited a building. The building is screened from High Level Road, by five big trees, pleasing to the eye, and very welcome greenery in an otherwise drab, concrete jungle. Every cloud supposedly has a silver lining, but here it’s the reverse it seems. Here the silver lining, those Five Big Trees, has a dangerous cloud.

The trees’ roots are embedded in the clay soil from the top of the hillock to pavement level, but most of the clay soil has eroded, the roots are clearly to be seen on the pavement side, and the trees are held from toppling over to the pavement and HL Road only by that portion of its roots embedded in the soil still left. With rains and winds blowing, and gales that occur each year, more and more of the soil still holding the trees are likely to get eroded, leaving little soil to hold these huge trees. It is a matter of time, I believe before one or more of these trees topple over.

Unless very early, or rather immediate protective action is taken by the concerned Authorities (the CMC, RDA, Pradeshiya Sabha, whoever, and the Ministry/Ministries involved) the consequences of such an occurrence are too tragic to imagine. There are traffic lights at that junction and invariably long lines of traffic are seen just by those trees. Often, the traffic is stationary for several minutes, stopped by the “red” signal, and waiting for the “go” signal to move ahead. Many motorists perhaps do not realise, when stalled at the traffic lights, the danger they could be in, or indeed are in; with huge trees waiting to topple over at some point of time.

So in the public interest, the authorities concerned should get going immediately on preventive measures as may be necessary because heavy rains and windy conditions have been predicted as coming shortly, by the Met Dept.