A falling tree crushed a boy to death during the afternoon storm on Monday. It looks like an easy explanation: high winds felled the tree, the boy was just unlucky. But look a little deeper, and one finds a host of civic agencies going about their work mindlessly and striking at the roots of Bengaluru and its trees -- digging trenches too deep to lay pipes and cables, asphalting roads such that rainwater can't seep through, and cutting away branches of trees and making them unstable while untangling them from electricity wires. Do they care? In 2005, a Tree Committee report dealt with the problem of trees uprooting during monsoons and suggested solutions. Now we know, the BBMP hasn’t even opened a page of the report! If it had, that young boy could well have been alive today.
It’s no secret that Bengaluru has lost a great deal of its green cover, especially over the last decade as trees have made way for buildings and infrastructure necessary for its growing population. Not helping the situation any are civic agencies like the BBMP, BESCOM, BSNL and BWSSB, which dig up roads at will for repairs, carelessly cutting into the roots of trees or unsettling the soil around them, making them vulnerable to gusts of wind and heavy rain. Only on Monday a strong 59 kmph wind ripped through the city bringing down over 30 trees in various areas and leaving two, including a three and a half-year-old boy dead.
Read: Noon storm kills 2 after 59 kmph winds slam Bengaluru
We submitted a detailed report on what kind of pre- monsoon and post-monsoon measures need to be taken to mitigate tree fall across the city. But sadly till today the authorities have not opened even a single page of the report
—Dr A N Yellappa Reddy, Former Environment Secretary
Although this was no one-off incident as trees regularly fall in heavy rain and wind in the city, claiming lives in the process, little is done by way of 'tree management' to help save what is left of its green cover. No lessons are learnt despite the heat islands that now develop in summer in the absence of tree avenues and growing concretisation, making Bengaluru hotter than it has ever been.
A concerned BBMP had set up a multi- disciplinary committee of plant physiologists, entomologists, agronomists and plant pathologists, among others in 2005 to look into the phenomenon of trees falling in rain and wind. Based on a survey of many localities it detailed its reasons for uprooting of trees in Bengaluru in a report to then BBMP commissioner Jothi Ramalingam, but till date nothing has come of it.
Said former environment secretary, Yellappa Reddy, who headed the committee, “We submitted our detailed report on what kind of pre-monsoon and post-monsoon measures need to be taken up to mitigate tree fall across the city. But sadly till today the authorities have not even opened a single page of the report.”
Blaming the BBMP for failing to take care of trees while repairing or aspalting roads, he regrets that it merely hires contractors for such work and leaves it to them to decide how to go about it, instead of laying down some scientific guidelines to ensure that the trees are not disturbed. “When building roads they don't provide space to allow water to seep into the ground and into the roots nearby. Bescom workers are no better as they cut the supporting branches of trees ruthlessly and the BWSSB often cuts the roots of trees while digging drains. Such unscientific work eventually causes the trees to die,” the former bureaucrat, a passionate environmentalist, explained.
But the cruel assault on the city’s environment doesn’t end there, he notes. “Cable operators fix their cables so carelessly that they break tree branches, and the huge flex advertisements hung by advertisers often forcefully bring down branches in strong wind,” he observed with concern.
Civic activists like Ms Mahalakshmi Parthasarthy, secretary of the Citizens Action Forum too blame the civic agencies for much of the problem. “The root of the problem is that our trees are not scientifically managed. Often the unscientific cementing and asphalting carried out by the BBMP harms the trees and those who illegally axe them, cut their roots, making things even worse," she lamented.
If the city has to save lives and its trees in heavy rain and wind, its important to identify those with weakened roots and branches and take precautions, stress environmentalists. Appointing tree wardens to ensure that they get enough water and regularly monitor the city’s green cover is essential too, they insist. “We also need to make sure that people don’t discharge contaminants into the ground,” they added, emphasising that the major responsibility lay with the civic agencies, which needed to be sensitive to the trees in and around the areas they may be digging or asphalting.
Mayor pulls up forest department officials
Following the Monday mishap, Mayor Manjunath Reddy reviewed the Forest department’s preparedness for monsoons. Upset with their lackadaisical attitude, Reddy took the officials to task for not pruning and cutting dead trees in underpasses, low-lying areas and water-logging prone roads. “Despite being warned many times to be monsoon ready, the engineers and Forest department officials have failed to take preventive measures. Monday’s mishap was a result of officials’ lack of preparedness,” Reddy said.
He also charged the Forest department officials for only removing uprooted trees and dead trees from roads. “We have to work to avert mishaps, not after a mishap has occurred,” he maintained.
He instructed the zonal engineers, commissioners and officers to review and monitor that men and machinery were available to handle emergencies. He demanded, “There are nearly 900 gangmen working in different squads. What are these workers doing? What emergency works are being carried out?” He directed a weekly report must be filed by the zonal joint commissioners on the duties of these workers. Mr Reddy demanded that the city police had identified 54 vulnerable spots across the city and in how many spots had the BBMP taken preventive measures. He instructed the BBMP officials to revisit the spots and ensure that no accidents will occur.
Most often, we look into complaints by corporators, resident welfare association members and others. Acting on their complaint, our tree officers inspect the spot and give instructions to the gangmen to cut or prune trees
—Mr Ranganathaswamy, DCF, BBMP Forest department
BBMP fails to prune trees, says it is understaffed
While the BBMP is expected to audit trees and prune them if necessary every year before the arrival of the monsoon, it has never done this in all the time that it has been around. Ask it why and it comes up with the stock response that it is understaffed. Its forest cell, which has the responsibility of assessing the condition of trees in the city and keeping them healthy, is run by a nine-member team, which cannot reach to do all the work involved, it claims.
Said DCF Ranganathaswamy of the agency’s forest cell, “We are barely able to manage. Most often when we receive complaints by corporators, resident welfare association members and others, our tree officers inspect the spot and instruct the gang men to cut or prune the trees as may be required.”
Although the BBMP also has 21 emergency squads of eight workers each, which attend to rain emergencies and pruning of trees, the agency claims they are not adequate either considering the magnitude of the work involved. “We have sent many proposals to the government for recruitment of more staff, but there has been no positive response,” said a forest officer, adding that although environmentalists, corporators and residents had called for tree auditing, they had not been taken seriously. “Their pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” he said.
