Urban Forestry, General - Laserfiche WebLink

New Search

Gene Shutt - At 4:00 am Sunday morning (June 1, 1997) I received a telephone call from Ellwood Cushman of Public Safety. He asked if we had any boom trucks similar to those used by Transportation. I told him the only boom trucks we had were assigned to the tree crew and asked why they needed a boom truck. Ellwood said there were people in the trees at 8th and Charnelton and they needed to lift an officer up into the trees to pepper spray them so they would come down. I told him a fire truck would work better for that purpose. He agreed but said fire staff didn't want to become involved. Given the nature of what I was told the truck was needed for, I felt dispatching of one person would be adequate and preferable as there would be news media and cameras on site. The less staff we had at the site, the better. For that same reason I chose not to respond, as there were police officers at the scene and they would be in charge of the incident. I contacted Scott Vargas of the tree crew and he responded. About 4:30 am Scott Plamondon called me as he had been contacted by Scott Vargas. Apparently the situation had changed and the tree truck would be needed to do actual tree pruning and a second member from the tree crew was needed. Scott wanted to know who I had attempted to contact so he wouldn't waste his time calling them a second time. Scott wound up contacting another member of his staff, and he also went to the site. Scott Plamondon - I received a call from Scott Vargas at 4:30am stating that he had been called out and he was alone and needed support. I then called Gene Shutt, who called out Scott, and got information about the nature of the call out. I then called Scott back and informed him to proceed to the job site at Charnelton and follow the directions of the police commander. Scott Vargas arrived on site around 5:00 am. I then contacted Brad Black from Facilities and he wasn't able to clarify the specific need. At this time I wasn't clear as to the exact nature of the request for service, whether we were to provide the boon for access into the trees or pruning the trees to provide access. I then came in about 5:30 am and went to the job site to determine what was happening and whether or not another member of the field crew was needed. When I saw what was happening, basically that Scott was pruning the tree for access, I determined that another field crew member was needed and called the next person on the list that Gene hadn't yet called and Dave Edwards was called in at 6:00 am. He arrived on the job site around 6:30am and assisted Scott in the pruning of the trees to provide access for the police to attempt to remove the protesters. We provided pruning of the trees to provide access under the general direction of the police commander, Becky Hansen. We remained on the site until the last protester was removed from the trees. This was around 10:40 am.