LUCKY: Darren and Janet Poulton with children (from left) Kierra, Abbey and Campbell just hours after Janet and the kids were almost crushed by a tree (behind).By SHAUN INGUANZO
A MOTHER and three children have narrowly escaped being crushed to death by a tree which council officers said was safe.
Now the family says they no longer feel bound by council restrictions and in future will chop down any dangerous trees.
“You’d get fined 10 or 20 thousand dollars but what price do you put on your children’s lives?” said Kallista mum Janet Poulton.
Ms Poulton was unloading her children from the family car in their driveway when a 30 metre blackwood snapped at the trunk and fell towards them.
She said she was torn between her son Campbell, 3, standing near the property’s main gate, and her two daughters Kierra, 5, and Abbey, four months, still in the car as the tree fell.
“I screamed, I didn’t know which direction to run,” she said.
Ms Poulton and her children returned home to Owen Street, Kallista, at 2.30pm on Tuesday 30 August.
Ms Poulton said Campbell moved before the tree crushed the gate, and the tree fell so close to her and the other children that it scratched the car’s bonnet.
A bulk of the tree entered the Poultons’ backyard, destroying a fence, a clothesline, a garden, and causing minor roof damage.
The tree, aged between 80 and 100 years old, was on next door council land and Ms Poulton said that over the past three years she had twice asked the council to remove it because she feared for the safety of her children.
“We wanted it pulled out, there were limbs falling down,” she said.
Ms Poulton said she had completed the latest of her letters to the council requesting the tree’s removal on the morning of the incident.
The Poultons said the Shire of Yarra Ranges had carried out core samples on the tree in 2002, declared it to be safe, and said it would not cut the tree down.
Husband Darren said when the family offered to cover the cost of tree removal, the council told them they would not be granted a permit due to its environmental significance.
But Ms Poulton said once the fallen tree was cleared last week, the remaining stump revealed it was rotten.
“That rotting did not happen in the space of two years, it would have been rotten when council first came to inspect it,” Ms Poulton said.
The shire’s senior community relations officer Simone Ryan revealed the tree exhibited some decay in the 2002 inspection but said it was ‘compartmentalised’ (scattered).
Ms Ryan said the council had then cleared a neighbouring tree and trimmed the remaining one of dead wood and limbs during its latest inspection in 2003.
She said the council determined that if the tree collapsed it would fall in the direction of the driveway, but that was not a risk.
Ms Ryan said: “The 80 to 100 year old tree was also reported as significant because of its good condition for its age and contribution to habitat for local fauna.
“The report notes that the area where the tree may hit if it failed was a driveway.
“As driveways are generally only used for a fraction of each day this was not considered to be a high risk.”
But Ms Poulton was not satisfied with council’s explanation.
“How would they like to be getting their kids out of a car when a tree comes down?
“It is still a possibility, and you would think it is better to remove it than run the risk of causing fatalities.”
Ms Poulton said the council had since contacted the family to claim responsibility for the tree, and was forwarding the matter on to its claims department to cover the cost of the damage to the Poultons’ property.
Ms Poulton, who works for a solicitor’s firm, said she was handing the case to her company.
