Lakewood to chop down at least 400-year-old Douglas fir deemed a hazard

A 400 to 600-year-old Douglas fir in Lakewood will be chopped down on Tuesday after the city deemed it to be sick and a risk for falling on nearby homes and public infrastructure.

Micah Glastetter will be cutting down the 150-foot-tall, 80-inch-wide tree and has plans to reuse all of the wood for various kinds of furniture, such as fireplace mantels, tables, and other mementoes to be sold at his Lakewood Live Edge workshop, according to The Tacoma News Tribune.

Arborist found the tree had a ‘moderate risk’ of falling due to internal decay

Ranger Tree Service, founded by Glastetter, has been hired by the city to cut down the tree, which sits along Lake Steilacoom Drive S.W. The total cost of the project will cost taxpayers roughly $29,000 and shut down the roadway on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ranger Tree Service will handle the traffic control while the tree is cut down, such as any detours or on-site management.

Arborist Alan Haywood noted that the tree had a “moderate risk” of falling due to mushrooms that had grown on the trunk and led to heart rot, which can cause a tree to grow hollow over time, rotting out the roots and causing breakage, according to The Tacoma News Tribune.

The city noted that the tree had been condemned due to decay, root disease, and a substantial lean. Glastetter explained why he is putting a concerted effort into recycling the wood harvested from the tree, rather than allowing any “big beautiful trees to be turned into firewood.”

“Everything organic is beautiful,” Glastetter told The Tacoma News Tribune. “This tree lived a long time, and it faced a ton of adversity — hot, dry summers, cold winters. All that for nothing? If we burn it, I mean, literally, that is what we call wasting money, is burning cash. This is burning a beautiful, precious resource. And so the fact that so much wood does go up people’s chimneys in the Northwest is because we have so much of it, and it’s easy to take for granted.”

Glastetter continued to state that he has a personal connection with the Douglas fir and wishes to personally remove it because he has grown a relationship with it.

Certain sections from the towering fir will weigh roughly 20k pounds each

He noted that if the tree were to fall over, due to some of the branches growing full trees out of them, it would cost the city 10 times as much money as it would to remove it now.

Ranger Tree Service will use a crane to remove a majority of the branches from the tree on Tuesday, and later cut down the logs into sections the following day, stating that some sections will weigh roughly 20,000 pounds each.

“We’ll probably take this tree out one branch at a time from the bottom branch all the way to the top of the tree, and that’ll be the first day,” Glastetter told The Tacoma News Tribune.

In total, there will be five employees on the ground and one up in the tree, eventually loading everything up into a trailer to be hauled back to the Lakewood Live Edge Shop for further use.

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