A young woman travelling to work with her father at the wheel had a fortuitous escape when a full-grown cotton tree along SP Mukherjee Road crashed on their moving car and smashed through the passenger side.
Ananya Guha came out of the car sobbing around 8am, still unsure how she remained unscathed.
Ananya’s father, Biswarup Guha, said: “We were going from our Bowbazar home to Tollygunge. We did not realise anything till suddenly something very heavy fell on the car and the roof came down almost crushing us. The next moment I looked outside and found that a huge tree trunk had landed on our car.”
Several police officers who went to the spot, opposite Purna cinema, said the father and the daughter had a “miraculous escape” as they were within inches of the trunk.
The incident has once again exposed the dangers the city’s uncared for trees pose to motorists and pedestrians — with or without rain and storm.
Although the trees look healthy and strong from outside, unscientific plantation along concrete footpaths, irregular pruning or inadequate check-up weakens them and causes them to fall.
Naturist Arjan Basu Roy said cotton trees were appropriate for avenue plantation only if their roots had enough space for horizontal and vertical growth.
The damaged car in front of Bhowanipore police station. Gautam Bose
“Cotton trees are well adapted and acclimatised for Kolkata. The trunks are sturdy and the trees bear large flowers with a high amount of nectar. Hence cotton trees attract a lot of birds, which is again very good for the city. But the problem develops when the roots of deep-rooted trees like this one do not get adequate space for horizontal and vertical growth,” said Basu Roy.
The roots do not get vertical space to grow mostly because of underground pipelines while the horizontal space is encroached upon by concrete.
Unscientific pruning of tree crowns also leads to large disbalanced trees, he said.
Last Saturday, 36 trees collapsed during the Nor’wester, one of them injuring two persons in Salt Lake. At the Hedua crossing in north Kolkata, a traffic signal post collapsed on a car during the storm.
On Thursday morning, there was neither storm nor rain.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation officials said the cotton tree was at least 30 years old and there was no apparent sign of damage.
“It was an old tree as we do not plant cotton trees these days. If you see the tree closely, you will find there was no sign of damage or decay in the trunk that could have alerted us about its condition,” said a KMC.
Police and personnel of the disaster management group chopped the tree into pieces and removed the trunk from the thoroughfare.
Till the tree trunk was removed, the Esplanade-bound flank of SP Mukherjee Road was split into two channels and Tollygunge-bound vehicles were diverted through one of them.
Traffic on the stretch became normal by 9am, the police said.