Queens Tribune

First it was the one closer to Marathon Parkway. The bark started flaking, falling into the street. Without much more warning Marvin Tessler and Harold Levy were dragging a 25-foot branch towards the flake-covered curb two weeks later.

Just a few feet down the quiet block, more bark started flaking. A month or two passed before Tessler and Levy were back in the street lugging another branch to the side of the road. This time though, the soft-spoken Tessler was cursing the decaying limbs that had landed mere centimeters from the trunk of his silver Hyundai.

Another month passed and a few more feet down the block more bark started flaking. Walking past the large branches that lay in the street across from their homes towards the latest victim, Tessler and Levy knew what was to come as they brushed the dried leaves and crumbling bark towards the curb. Within days they were back out there, once again dragging another lifeless 25-foot branch towards the curb.

“It’s an epidemic I’m telling you,” Marvin, 75, said looking up towards the leafless branches entangled in black cables. “There’s something going on here, we know it. But we just don’t know what it is.”

Within three months Levy, 76, and Tessler have seen three trees wither away as rotting branches crashed down onto 57th Avenue. The baffled men said they have exhausted their energies dialing 311, the Parks Department and Con Edison looking for help and maybe even answers, but what they’ve realized is that as the weeks pass more branches will crash down and the city will be nowhere in sight.

“Honestly, we really don’t know what is causing this. It could be some kind of bug, but it could even be those wires up there,” Tessler said, running his hand across the flaking bark.

“It really has to be those wires,” Levy said. “I’m telling you, I think that’s what it is, because it’s obviously only happening to the trees on this side of the street.”

“But you see, no one’s been here to help us figure this out,” Tessler added with a sigh.

Searching through their files Monday, neither the Parks Department nor Con Edison were able to find any record of the case numbers Tessler and Levy supplied the Action Desk. They did assure the Action Desk that if Tessler and Levy were to once again report the fallen branches and unhealthy trees an inspector would be sent out to the site as soon as possible.

“Generally, we respond as soon as possible,” said a spokesman from the Parks Department. “We typically focus on emergency situations first, where large branches or trees are blocking main roadways and then onto the residential streets and trees that have fallen on private property.”

As for Tessler and Levy’s theory of an epidemic, the Parks Department couldn’t comment as to why the trees appear to be unhealthy and decaying. “We’d have to send out an inspector from the forestry division first and based on what he finds something will most likely be done, but we can’t determine whether or not it’s the power lines or something else.”

Tessler, who has lived on 57th Avenue since 1963, and Levy, since 1964, have waited more than three months, past the Park’s Department’s 90 day pledge, to see the branches removed and the decaying trees addressed.

“We probably wouldn’t be waiting this long and watching this epidemic sweep down our street if the Parks Department would have invested at least an ounce of preventive maintenance,” said Tessler. “This is a beautiful neighborhood and it needs the city’s services, and it needs it before another tree gets sick or another branch crashes into the street.”

To report unhealthy trees or to request pruning and branch removal the Parks Department urges neighbors to contact the forestry division at (718) 699-0873.