Adverse weather conditions Thursday caused a large tree to fall on North side and block the road in front of McDowell Hall, according to William Suter, director of Facilities Management.
No one was injured, but the tree nearly missed Josh Casey, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, who was exiting McDowell just as the tree fell.
"I was leaving McDowell on my way to work when I heard roots cracking, and I looked over and saw this giant tree falling at me," Casey said. He said he ran away as fast as possible.
Casey said he usually walks to work while listening to his iPod, but on Thursday the batteries died.
"I just wonder, if my batteries hadn't died, would the tree have hit me?" Casey said.
Besides the risk of injury, Casey feared the tree's damage of the residence hall.
"I honestly thought it was going to crash into McDowell," Casey said.
The metal railing between the tree and the road was damaged. Facilities Management has not yet received an invoice on the exact cost of repairs, according to Suter.
The tree was blocking the road for about half an hour, but it only took Facilities Management a few minutes to move it, he said. Facilities Management goes to great lengths to maintain strong, healthy trees and took every possible precaution to prevent an accident such as this, according to Suter.
"We have an arboretum, so we are required to keep an inventory on the state of every single tree," Suter said. "We have no rotten trees or any that serve a threat."
For example, when a tree near McKinley started to rot, they removed it, Suter said.
The tree that fell was not rotten, but in this type of cold weather, trees become more brittle and may fall due to excessive weight from snow and ice combined with being twisted in the wind, Suter said.
Despite the precautions, this is not the first time a tree has fallen on AU's campus. The eagle carving outside Bender Library came from a huge oak tree that fell in a storm in September 2005, Suter said.
