It was a tree apocalypse.
Hundreds of tree limbs littered city streets last week after the Nov. 15 storm that dumped 6.4 inches of snow in Central Park.
The snowfall took down about 120 trees and more than 1,500 limbs. It left at least 450 limbs hanging, according to the city Parks Department, which is responsible for trees both in parks and on the sidewalks.
Manhattan seems to have fared the worst with 1,302 calls made to 311 about tree damage as of early last week. There were 995 calls in Brooklyn; 945 in Queens; 99 on Staten Island; and 20 in the Bronx, though some of the calls were duplicates.
“This unseasonal storm resulted in far more limbs down than actual trees down,” said Maeri Ferguson, a Parks Department spokeswoman. “More than half the trees in the city still had their fall leaves, and many limbs could not bear the extra weight of wet frozen snow on top of the leaves.”
The department warned New Yorkers to stay out of parks after the storm because of the danger from falling limbs and it closed paths at Union Square Park.
A police officer in Manhattan suffered a cut forehead when part of a branch fell on him during the storm, according to the NYPD.
Two EMTs were also injured when a tree limb fell on them on the Lower East Side.
The Parks Department called in 15 emergency contractors to help clear debris along with its own crews and those from the city Department of Environmental Protection.
“It’s a little storm but it did a lot of damage,” said John Schmidt, owner of John’s Tree Experts in Huntington, LI, one of the emergency contractors. “We saw a lot of cars that were crushed.”
He said he saw damage to mostly pear and locust trees.
The Parks Department turned the damaged trees into wood chips or compost.
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