F–K Trees!

They are coming to get us, and no one is paying attention to the true danger:

It was one of those accidents inevitably described as one in a million: A New Yorker strolling down a leafy path crossed by thousands each day is hit on the head and critically injured by a rotted-out tree branch that snapped under its own weight off a massive pin oak tree.

The branch was four inches thick and fell 20 feet on Wednesday morning, putting a gash in the man’s skull, damaging his upper vertebrae and causing a partial lung collapse. The man, Sasha J. Blair-Goldensohn, 33, began to show preliminary signs of consciousness on Thursday, responding to verbal commands, said his mother, Gwenda Blair, in a phone interview.

. . .

People passing by the site of the accident, near the entrance at Central Park West and 63rd Street, gave a fairly consistent interpretation of the previous day’s events: One in a million accidents are a fact of life in a city of more than eight million people. Plummeting tree branches, most added, are somewhere near the bottom of their daily worries, below falling construction cranes and rogue pedicabs, not to mention the more mundane concerns of everyday life.

“It wouldn’t keep me out of the park,” said Katina Zachmanoglow, 52, as she sat in the shade of a large oak. “It’s too isolated of an incident to be concerned.”

“I’d probably be more concerned about a pigeon doing something to me,” she added.

“I’m more afraid of manholes,” said Sarah Crocker, a 27-year-old musician, cooling off after a jog.