There’s nothing funny about a tree falling on two kids — both survived — in Massachusetts. But there is something absurd to the point of parody about the erytetsrzn
way Good Morning America played it yesterday. First of all, being based in New York City, the show plopped its reporter down in Central Park where, he told viewers, there are trees “very similar” the tree in Massachusetts.
Isn’t that arboreal profiling?
Then the reporter showed the admittedly dramatic footage of the tree falling and gravely intoned: “It’s the heart-stopping video that might make any parent think twice before sending their children outside to play again.”
As a Facebook commenter pointed out: “So if there’s a fire, does he say, ‘It’s enough to make any parent think twice before letting their children go inside again’?”
Look, we just had three full days of watching tots lured from the park by a man with a puppy and a shaky grasp of statistics. No parent is going to let their kids play in the park again ANYWAY. All the millions of trees toppling all over America’s playgrounds are only going to hit a few Goldfish crackers spilled while the kids were being yanked away from the peril surrounding them on all sides: Swings (now banned in Richland and Spokane, Washington, school districts), trees (see above), ice cream vendors (Los Angeles is pondering mandatory fingerprinting), terrifying predators (like this couple, facing a possible 15 years in prison for having sex on the beach), and all the danger of hanging upside down from the monkey bars (an activity now banned at a Needham, MA, school). I was at another school in Massachusetts last week where the kids could swing on the playground swings during recess, but not during the afterschool program, because afterschool is governed by different regulations that require a wider footprint.
So remember what Good Morning America has told us: “While falling trees and branches in public parks are rare, they can be dangerous and even deadly.”
In other words: Just because something barely ever happens is no reason to consider that it barely ever happens. – L.
55 Comments
You mean like this
“OMG! A Tree fell on them … never.” followed shortly by “Get a grip, WOW.” Probably not what he meant?
In these days of irresponsible journalism I shouldn’t be surprised, but “It’s the heart-stopping video that might make any parent think twice before sending their children outside to play again” really takes the cake.
The fire analogy deserves to be spread far and wide. Its a great rebuttal. I wonder if GMA would be interested in having you on to speak to it, and actually bring a few real statistics (both on the childhood fear and obesity side, and the whats-actually-dangerous side)?
“It’s the heart-stopping video that might make any parent think twice before sending their children outside to play again.” …. AKA… Here is one more excuse to stay glued to the TV screen and please especially get the next generation glued to the screen. We want to make you into good little consumers…. let me rephrase that “we are here to keep you informed on how to protect your family.” Note all our protection will involve stay indoors watching TV and/or purchasing more stuff.
That really was not my reaction or my daughter’s to a tree falling story. My daughter loves a certain tree falling story, but then the way I tell it, the story is about the goodness of neighbors. A woman I shared a waiting room with, had been out walking her dog when a sudden, unpredicted storm with hurricane force winds hit. It knocked a tree over onto the woman. She was pinned, and her dog ran away scared. When a neighbor caught the dog, still dragging a leash, he took the animal home. But finding no one home, and considering the sudden storm, the neighbor became concerned. So he started knocking on doors and organized a search party. In short order one of the searchers found the woman, and summoned the others who lifted the tree off of her. She was covered in scrapes and bruises and thought it best to have the doctors to check for broken bones. But she was in good spirits because she was sure she would be okay, and was very thankful for her neighbors.
After seeing that woman and hearing her story, I didn’t think for a moment about avoiding the outdoors. I did for a fleeting moment think that people living alone would do well to get a dog. Then I remembered it was a freak accident, and not a reason to get a pet you wouldn’t otherwise want.
We had a local toddler who was seriously injured – permanent severe brain damage – by a limb that fell due to Hurricane Sandy while playing outside at daycare. This was a complete fluke. Not only are injuries from falling limbs rare, but we are 4 hours drive inland from the coast and about 1,000 miles south of the eye of Sandy so there was no reason to expect winds severe enough to knock down a large limb.
I was very impressed that I saw no blaming of the daycare, no fear-mongering over trees or outside and no comments about working mothers and daycare. What is sad is that I was actually surprised to see none of these things as I have come to expect them.
The only news reports that stops my heart as a mom these days are stories on the Meitevs and anyone who has faced something similar.
BTW – Greg Abbott, the current Governor of Texas, was injured by a falling tree limb and is partially paralyzed.
I think that I shall never see
something as dangerous as a tree…..
– any object, natural or otherwise, turned into something dark and foreboding.
Even bubble-wrap can have its dark side.
Humor is the best weapon I know as defence against idiocy.
(The trouble is – idots don’t laugh. They never laugh.)
You have to be able to “get” the joke.
Perhaps the nation needs more laugh therapy.
So it’s a normal human instinct to have a moment of “shudder” when you hear something like that. Most parents will have a second of seeing their kid as the once crushed by the tree, and be upset by it.
But reasonable people do not function based on those instincts, or we’d never get out of bed (and then die of some kind of atrophy or metabolic disease anyway.)
That kind of reaction is like an instinctive flinch when you see a bird fly close across your field of vision. It’s a reflex, but for even a marginally sensible person it has nothing to do with changing your behavior.
Acknowledging reactions like that and promoting them as substantive fears the way the GMA report did not only blows the fear out of proportion, it feeds into an unhealthy mental habit of magnifying every negative sensation into a significant emotion. For healthy people, it’s unhelpful. For people who struggle with mental illness, it’s downright toxic. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
…”as the one crushed by the tree”…
Something like this happened in my neighborhood when I was a teenager. I won’t clog up the comments thread with a long story, so those who are interested can read more here:
http://trackerneil.blogspot.com/2012/07/freedom.html
The quick takeaway: Nobody back then thought that a freak accident was grounds for reappraising the way children use playgrounds. I am sure the family was devastated by this terrible event, and understandably so, but that doesn’t mean that what happened was a failure of anyone to protect children. Accidents happen, and they’re often no one’s fault.
Wow – that report borders on irresponsible!
where to start?
25-30 people per YEAR are hurt by falling trees/limbs – this is a cause to worry?
Think twice about letting your children out to play? Then they show footage of a tree falling on a house!
Move to the desert everyone!!
I also would like to note that those children were surrounded by parents – so are they irresponsible for letting children play in a park with trees? OR are they irresponsible because they did not PREVENT the tree from falling in the 1st place?
Then they show a young boy crossing a street – WITH NO PARENT IN SIGHT!!! Didn’t those parents “learn their lesson”? How could they let him outside when there are still trees in that neighborhood and town?!?
I am proposing legislation that ALL trees be planted no less than 1500 feet from any playground, school or area where children may ever be.
Parents who allow children to play near trees (and big bushes…and flowers – allergies and bees!) should expect a visit from Child Services…
(sigh)
I was about 11 years old, eating dinner with my parents and 8-year-old sister, when suddenly the whole house shook.
A very large tree had fallen in our yard.
Yes, we wondered what might have happened if one of us had been in the yard at the time.
But we didn’t do anything differently after that. I think we were right.
“…terrifying predators (like this couple, facing a possible 15 years in prison for having sex on the beach)…”
I am not going to defend or support the ideas that (a) these folks registering as sex offenders makes any sense, or (b) that people should go to jail for this sort of behavior.
But in the interests of accuracy, the couple is not facing 15 years in prison. The man is. And he’s looking at 15 years because he already spent 8 years in prison for “cocaine trafficking” and this new thing was less than three years after he got out for his prior felony. In other words, the 15 years is a result of his not being able to keep his nose clean for three years after previously getting convicted of a pretty serious felony, not because he got frisky with his girlfriend in public.
Isn’t that arboreal profiling?
Isn’t that arboreal profiling?, Love it!
He’s absolutely right. There’s a lot of deadly things out there that have the potential to happen.
And the point is…?
I am just glad this tree that fell was not some species of nut tree. With all the allergies today………….OHHHHHHHH THE HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!
New book title in the Fear Market: “The ‘Taking’ Tree?”
Like the video of the kids trying to get in the schoolbus almost being run over by a car driving in the shoulder. The mothers remark was ” can’t let my kids walk to the schoolbus alone” but my first thought as a european was ” let’s petition the council for some nice boulders, a big tree or a heap of concrete rubbel that we can pretty up with some plants where the busstop starts and lets see if any driver does that again”
I live in MA and didn’t hear about this…but then I don’t watch TV during the week.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the “whomping willow” tree from the Harry Potter stories.
“We had a local toddler who was seriously injured — permanent severe brain damage — by a limb that fell due to Hurricane Sandy while playing outside at daycare.”
Cut down all the trees!
oh wait, that’s bad for the environment! Make it illegal for people to come withing 100m of a tree while not wearing a hard hat!
Isn’t this story enough to make adults think twice about sending adults outside too? This risk isn’t only related to children. We should all stay inside, always, where there are no falling trees. We should make this one incident the guiding principle of our lives.
Seriously, it’s terrible, tragic, and awful every time someone, especially a child, is injured or killed during a freak accident. No one actually expects to be struck by a falling tree. Very sad.
But really, how does one resolve this? Perhaps a few lessons on observing your surroundings? Does this look like a reasonably safe place to play? Is any obvious danger eminent?
Beyond that, what else can you do? The world is funny that way.
This cracks me up: “So if there’s a fire, does he say, ‘It’s enough to make any parent think twice before letting their children go inside again’?”
Pretty soon it’ll be a crime to let a child go outside at all unless they’re wearing full safety gear and have two responsible adults following them at all times.
There is money in fear. There is no money is perceived safety.
My brother-in-law was about to head out on a religious mission (this was a couple of years ago). Three days before he’s supposed to leave, he broke his femur in a freak and random accident. It was a clean break that wasn’t too much drama to treat or heal, but it did put him out of commission for a while.
The joke became “We could leave you on the couch in bubblewrap and the ceiling would just randomly collapse on you.”
Hmm, I guess this makes the entire state of Vermont off-limits to children. Time to break it to the kids…
Remember the story “Henny Penny”? lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSf_K5PeFw
Can apply pretty well with this fear mongering “news story”.
On the unpredictable nature of trees falling down:
When I was a kid, a friend’s neighbor ended up with a mammoth tree getting wind damage and tipping over so it leaned over their entire trailer house. It seriously looked like the slightest breeze could tip the whole thing over and flatten their entire house because that tree was easily twice as big as their trailer. They weren’t allowed to cut down the tree, so they just had to deal with the imminent destruction of their home all summer.
Then another lot opened up across the street from the tree, and they moved their trailer house, relieved to avoid the inevitable crash from the tree.
Two weeks later wind from another storm literally ripped up that same tree and flung it all the way over to the other lot and demolished their house. If they had stayed put, their house would have been untouched.
I guess in the end, you really can’t escape fate.
Mark Roulo –
No, they are BOTH facing up to 15 years in prison as that is the maximum for the statute under which they were convicted. The prosecution is not asking for 15 years for her and there is no expectation that she will get 15 years, but the judge sets the sentence and he has the full authority to sentence her to 15 years in prison.
Arboreal profiling?! I love it! Thanks for bringing some light to these dark days of “news.”
>But in the interests of accuracy, the couple is not facing 15 years in prison. The man is. And he’s looking at 15 >years because he already spent 8 years in prison for “cocaine trafficking” and this new thing was less than three >years after he got out for his prior felony. In other words, the 15 years is a result of his not being able to keep his >nose clean for three years after previously getting convicted of a pretty serious felony, not because he got frisky >with his girlfriend in public.
So he’s facing 15 years in prison because of having sex on a beach AND because of the war on drugs. Got it.
Can’t see the video myself, due to some proprietary nonsense or other, but sounds like it was typical rubbish. A wee girl was killed here about a decade ago when crushed by a tree branch, very sad but you don’t see anyone stop playing in or walking under trees.
More people are killed by falling buildings, in earthquakes and the like, than have ever been killed by trees.
Maybe it’s time for a return to general reading of those wonderful nonsense cautionary tales from the Victorian Era. They are a great reminder that nothing much at all is safe . I especially Hilaire Belloc (?). .’Matilda ‘, ‘Algernon’ etc.
A few weeks ago, I heard on the news that a tree had fallen on a car as it drove through a Beverly Hills neighborhood. Then another tree fell on a car as it drove somewhere in the Midwest. Driving is already dangerous, and now we have to start worrying about trees. Maybe that will take our minds off the dangers or texting while driving, which no one in the media seems to be worried about. But trees, well that’s another problem entirely.
Also, we used to go camping at this location that had the most marvelous climbing tree. The kids loved to sit on the large trunk that branched off to the left and was almost parallel to the ground. A year after we had camped at the site near the tree, we returned to find the tree missing. The campground attendant told us that the tree had fallen a few weeks earlier. Luckily, no one was hurt badly and only on person got a scratch from one of the branches as it grazed him when the tree fell.
I think the main thing is that we can’t let fear rule our lives. Life is filled with danger and unexpected grief and sorrow, but if I dwell on that all day long, I’ll sit on m couch at home paralyzed with fear, which probably isn’t very healthy psychologically or physically.
hineata, we could write an entire little series of cautionary tales for children!
Heh….while we’re on the subject of ‘cautionary tales’….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Tales_for_Gruesome_Kids
Emily – yes! I feel inspired this morning, and am halfway through a particularly silly one already. Will bore you with it when I finish 🙂
Bob M., you say “I am proposing legislation that ALL trees be planted no less than 1500 feet from any playground, school or area where children may ever be.”
The sad thing, that almost doesn’t work as satire any more. I’ve noticed that newer playgrounds seldom do have trees anywhere nearby, and I’m thinking that actually is on purpose because people actually do think that. (I’ve noticed this because my son is still too small to go to the park alone, so I’m always in search of a shady bench.)
We had a tree fall on the family station wagon years ago while driving home from a swim meet amid an ice storm. I was 7 and sitting between my parents in the front (no seatbelt!) and they had six other kids in the rear seats. The tree landed between the from and second row and there were no injuries. Just a freak accident.
Yes, it could have been a lot worse but it hasn’t stopped me from driving my kids all over creation for their sports (though I wish it did…youth sports are NUTS). Maybe I can use it to get out of the soccer game we have to drive to on Mother’s Day 2 hours away). Sorry, I’m afraid a tree will fall on my car, can’t make it!
This reminds me of a decision the principal of our school made a few years ago.
There was a side entry to the school that was used by numerous students to enter and exit walking to and from school. The principal had tried other avenues to stop having to open it and eventually got an arborist in to assess the trees near the path to the gate…OUTside the school grounds. Of course the arborist said that, yes, there was a chance of large branches falling from the trees (well, duh!).
The gate was no longer opened citing safety precautions for students. Students now have to walk down to the front gate which takes them 200m along a path directly next to a busy, 4 lane main road, which was previously avoided by entering the side gate. Not only that but, a few short weeks after this decision, a large tree branch fell from a tree. Not along the path outside the school, but IN side school grounds. Right onto the cover over a classroom entry door.
I didn’t know whether to just shake my head or laugh.
Today’s New York Times featured a long detailed description of trained arborists working on NYC trees, to keep the trees healthy and the population safe. Timely! So, it is yet again proven that it is safe to go free range in public parks. Enjoy!
Thanks. Laughed out loud at the “arboreal profiling”. And yes, I absolutely agree that trees are not the serial killers that Good Morning America would have us believe, however……we have this thing in Australia called the gum tree (genus Eucalyptus) We sent a few to California some years back so you might know about them. We have a special name for the Eucalyptus papuana in particular – “the Widowmaker.” Possibly misnamed, as apparently they take out women and children too in equal measure. Just saying….
“The joke became “We could leave you on the couch in bubblewrap and the ceiling would just randomly collapse on you.””
When I was in high school that pretty much happened. One day we were sitting through geography lessons, droning along with the teacher as he pointed out cities, rivers, hills, etc. on a map, when a section of ceiling collapsed on top of one of the kids’ desks, splattering several others with fragments.
Nobody was hurt, ceiling was those light weight plates that had become waterlogged due to a broken water pipe.
Then last year in the company I worked the same happened. This time the plate just fell harmlessly on the floor though. Again nobody got hurt.
We probably ought to cut down all the trees now…just in case…
KILLER TREES! Yup, I have a story too. Walking to the bus stop 30 yrs ago I hear a huge crack-crash. I run the next 20 yards and a huge limb from a willow tree had fallen. Neighbor boy was there and it missed him by a foot or two? What did we do? Nothing. Bus came 5 min later and we got on and went to school.
But my real comment is about how STRANGERS from all over the park rushed in to help. STRANGERS, the most evil and suspicious of our species!
Let’s keep them all inside where they can eventually die from complications of childhood obesity. (I remember when I was little and used to run a quarter mile to school and back twice a day because we got to go home for lunch. Back then we had safety patrol boys to make sure little kids were safe on the way to school and back.)
As a 10-year old boy I was on a pontoon boat with my parents and another couple who owned the boat. We anchored along the shore to find some shade. As fate would have it, a large black snake was sunning itself on a dead tree limb overhead. The limb broke, striking my mother’s thigh, and a surprised 8-foot black snake had joined us on the boat.
Nothing to add, really, other than sometimes accidents are exactly that.
15 years ago a Penn State student was tragically killed by the falling limb from one of the 100+ year old elm trees that lined the walk to Old Main. The trees were suffering from a blight and all of them were removed. This walk will never be enjoyed again: http://chickswithchoices.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/medium_6288866486.jpg
This is absolutely nuts. You know, the funny part is, if it were ADULTS that tree fell on, we’d barely be batting an eyelash over it. Ok, it might make the news but the emphasis would be that it was a good thing nobody was hurt and I highly doubt there would be calls for people to stay inside or to never walk under a tree again! So I guess it’s OK for trees to fall on adults but not children.
JT, one of my high school friends, years before I met her, was laying on her bed when the ceiling fan fell on her. She got a cut on her face from her glasses.
Clearly, children should not be allowed to lay in their beds. 😛
From now on, mandatory helmets for pedestrians within 5 miles of a tree! 😛
How many people, including children, are killed in auto accidents every year ? Think about it.