24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY december 14-20, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com nine months later. In 2017, a 61-year-old woman wasn’t so fortunate. After a series of storms had blown through, a tree came down in Monterey in the Skyline Forest neighborhood. Her car crashed into the tree and she was killed. Arthur Pasquinelli and Jim Cullem remember it well. As the president of the Skyline Forest Neighborhood Association and chair of the group’s Safety Committee, respectively, trees—and their capacity to wreak havoc—occupy a lot of their time and attention. The irony is not lost on the two when asked what they like best about living in their tranquil neighborhood overlooking the city and Monterey Bay. “The trees for one,” says Cullem, as both men chuckle. “At least that’s what my wife likes.” The beautiful forest they enjoy is the very thing that worries them the most. Winter storms bring the potential for damage and power outages. Massive wildfires like those in Paradise and Maui are never far from mind. The species of tree that blankets their neighborhood is Pinus radiata, the Monterey pine. The pines were mostly what fell around the Peninsula during the March storms, including along Holman Highway between Monterey and Pebble Beach where Caltrans crews spent days clearing huge trees that fell across the highway, both in the initial storm and another storm system days later. “By and large, the problem with Monterey pine trees is they grow fast, they grow tall and they are relatively shallow rooted. They have a life expectancy of around 80 years,” says Cullem, who served as Carmel’s public works director from 1987-2003, where he became well acquainted with the tree. “They’re like humans in a sense. They live about as long, and they get just as stiff when they get to be 80. That’s the problem, they lose their flexibility. When they’re young, they can bend with the wind. When they get older, these trees become rigid.” And when fully grown the trees develop a crown at the top, “they become a big sail.” Monterey pines can reach up to 124 feet tall, with trunks around 6 feet in diameter, according to the National Resources Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As young trees they have a pyramid shape, but by the time they are fully grown their crowns become flat. If their roots are shallow, or they’re diseased or the soil becomes saturated, they can topple. “Boom. They can come down in very short notice,” Cullem says. It is a rare species native to only four other areas in the world: near Point Año Nuevo in San Mateo County; the Monterey Peninsula; Cambria in San Luis Obispo County; and the islands of Guadalupe and Cedros off the coast of Baja California. A domesticated variety is sold throughout the world, but the native Monterey pines are a more genetically diverse species that have been on the California coast since possibly the middle Miocene era, around 16 million years ago. Fossilized cones or needles have been found in 20 locations in California, including the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, according to the 2004 article by Frank Perry, “The Monterey pine through geologic time.” They are related to other pines called “California closed-cone pines,” cones sealed with resin that release their seeds in fire or in extreme temperatures. According to Perry, scientists theorized that the species adapted to dry climates which experienced occasional fires. As the flames sweep through the pines’ treetops, the cones’ resin melts, and the seeds are released within a day after the fire, allowing dead trees to repopulate quickly. It’s an adaptation that is not a good fit for the urbanized forest of today. In a healthy forest, there will be fires during which some trees survive, some do not, with the result being a forest composed of trees of various ages and sizes. (The last fire in the Del Monte Forest in Pebble Beach was in 1987, caused by an illegal campfire. It burned 160 acres and destroyed 31 structures. There were 18 injuries, mostly among firefighters, all minor.) Since fires are anathema to an area populated by humans, and the coastal climate doesn’t offer many high-temperature days, what’s resulted on the Peninsula is a forest of many similarly aged trees. “Fortunately for us, we’ve had relatively few homes hit and as far as we know, nobody has been killed or seriously injured within their house [in Skyline Forest],” Cullem says. “But the potential is there.” He saw it happen while working in Carmel. “When they come down on a house they go through [it] like a knife. They can go all the way down to the foundation. And you can imagine what would happen if you were in the way.” The vision of a tree crashing down the middle of their Pacific Grove dream home is on the minds of Tim Calvert and Christie Monson every day. That vision of one or more of their four Monterey cypress trees, each over 50 feet high, was so strong they moved their bedroom from the front of their home into a common area off their living room located at the back. “I have lived in P.G. since 1985 and I have seen trees with my own eyes, in perfectly nice weather, just pfft. So that’s why we’re here for the duration,” Monson says in her living room. “We moved our office, we’re working in the dining room.” Calvert and Monson became concerned after an arborist told them in 2018 the trees were at risk of failing. They applied for a tree removal permit from the City of Pacific Grove, but were denied. They applied again in January 2023, when their arborist’s assessment was worse. They were told that on a scale of 1-12, with 12 being the highest risk level, at least one tree was at a 10-11. The city’s arborist disagreed with the assessment and insisted the cypress trees were healthy. The couple got a lawyer and appealed to the Beautification and Natural Resources Committee, and again to the P.G. City Council in April. City officials mainFour Monterey cypress trees planted in 1986 in the front yard of a Pacific Grove home loom large over the home now owned by Tim Calvert and Christie Monson. The couple has unsuccessfully petitioned the city for permission to remove the trees that they say are diseased and in danger of falling. Skyline Forest Neighborhood Association President Arthur Pasquinelli (left) and Jim Cullem, chair of the safety committee, say they’ve petitioned the City of Monterey to include consideration of residents’ safety in the city’s tree ordinances when it comes to removing trees with a potential to cause damage. Most tree ordinances focus on keeping trees for as long as possible. “Boom. They can come down in very short notice.”
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