On Tuesday, October 13, a Garry oak tree fell on to Camosun College’s Lansdowne campus, ripping out part of a gutter off of Richmond House.
The Garry oak—an endangered species—was on Saanich property, on the sidewalk right off the edge of campus on Richmond Road near Argyle Avenue, in front of the Child Care Centre. Camosun facilities operations manager Julie Oakley says that the college isn’t responsible for trees that are off campus property, however, the trees next to Richmond House that were impacted by the fall were inspected by the college and declared safe.
“It knocked a couple of branches off that tree [in front of Richmond House], but I don’t think there was any significant damage,” she says. “Our guys would have gone around after the Saanich tree was pulled away and made sure that, if there were any hanging branches or anything [it was cleaned up]. I looked at it this morning. There’s nothing precarious going on with that tree.”
While Camosun wasn’t involved in the cleanup, Oakley says that college grounds workers are responsible for all the vegetation on both campuses. Anything the college does with endangered species has to have approval from Saanich or Oak Bay, depending where on campus the endangered species is (the border between the two municipalities runs through college property).
“I was in contact with the district of Saanich to inform them that it fell, and to let them know that it was blocking the sidewalk, and to put some timing around when they were going to deal with it,” says Oakley, adding that it took a few days because of the volume of trees Saanich was dealing with during the wind storm at that time. “We hadn’t checked the tree, we were not aware of any problems with the tree, like the internal rot that you can see in that [Victoria News] photo. It wouldn’t have been a tree that we had assessed. It would have been Saanich’s responsibility.”
Oakley says that the bigger logs from the tree were used in a Saanich restoration project, while some of the smaller logs were donated to the college’s carpentry department.
“They’re storing it for us until the saw mill has time for it,” says Oakley.
Camosun College Student Society external executive Quinn Cunningham says that the CCSS is happy no one was standing where the tree fell. He says that, in the interest of student safety, the college assessing trees on and around campus is a good idea.
“Big Garry oaks fall,” he says. “They come down hard.”
Trees on the college’s campuses may be assessed every three to five years, or longer, depending on visible changes to the vegetation on campus, says Oakley. The last assessment took place in 2018 at Interurban and last year at Lansdowne.