Watch: Largest tree in Lakewood comes down one branch at a time
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A 160-foot Douglas fir in Lakewood was cut down June 23 and June 24.
- City hired an arborist who found rot and a significant lean creating a risk of falling.
- The trunk will be cut into 20,000-pound slabs and turned into wood furniture.
The roaring sound of a chainsaw cut through a Lakewood neighborhood Tuesday as a 500-year-old, 160-foot-tall tree, the largest in the city, was disassembled, branch by branch.
As previously reported by The News Tribune, the large Douglas fir on Lake Steilacoom Drive Southwest was scheduled to be removed this week for $29,000 due to rot and a “moderate risk” of falling on neighboring homes and city infrastructure. Tuesday afternoon The News Tribune watched local business Ranger Tree Service cut the trees limbs off, leaving behind a tall corpse.
On Wednesday the trunk will be cut into large, 20,000 pound slabs and carted off to Ranger Tree Service’s woodshops, to be later made into live-edge tables, fireplace mantles and other goods.
The road was coated in sawdust, twigs and needles Tuesday as co-owner of Ranger Tree Service and Lakewood Live Edge Micah Glastetter was 160 feet up in the air, sawing off limbs with a chainsaw attached to his belt. Some dead branches landed on the concrete with a splintering crack. Others were floated down carefully with a 154-foot crane before they were fed into a wood chipper.
The removal of this tree is personal for Glastetter and his family (his son Jaron and daughter Savannah were also on the ground crew, operating machinery and cleaning up). Micah grew up in Lakewood and biked to the tree often, admiring its size. It was only fitting they were the ones to take it down this week.
“For the last 40 years he’s been bringing people to see it. He’s taken me and my brother and sister to see it several times as kids. I remember he used to tell me he wouldn’t take it out if somebody paid him a check for whatever number he said,” Jaron said. “But now that it’s dead and a hazard, he figures better somebody who cares about it and has somewhat of a personal relationship with the tree … [rather] than someone who’s just going to let all the wood go to waste.”
Lakewood Live Edge manager Matt Couch said Micah climbed the tree from the bottom to the top without assistance on Monday to honor the tree and give it one last opportunity to humble him, “the hard way.”
A couple of days ago the company flew a drone around the tree, to confirm there were no signs of nesting birds, Couch said. The arborist the city of Lakewood hired to examine the tree found rot and a significant lean that meant the fir was at a “moderate risk” of falling, as previously reported by The News Tribune. It’s safer to take the tree down now, rather than wait for it to fall or worsen, Couch said.
“There are some folks who say, ‘Hey, if it’s only a moderate risk, it may live for another 50 years, why should we take it down today?’ And while that is true, each year that goes by, it gets more and more risky,” he said. “At a certain point it is so severe in risk that no one is going to climb this tree. So the only safe time to take it down is when there’s still enough meat in the tree that you can do this safely, because otherwise the alternative is it drops on the structures that are right here.”
