Leah Russin was sitting on her living room sofa, her 3-year-old daughter on her lap, on March 21 when a Douglas fir that towered over her backyard toppled over into her house, puncturing the roof, destroying an eave, crushing the side of her balcony and penetrating a crawl space just a few feet away from her.

She grabbed her daughter and ran out the front door and into the pouring rain.

"All I was thinking about is, 'How far do I need to run?' and 'How much of my house will collapse?'" Russin said.

Her husband, Chris, had been working upstairs and, with the wind howling outside, she had asked him to go outside and take a picture of the tree — just moments before it fell. He was safe.

The tree in her Barron Park backyard is one of many across Palo Alto and around the region that toppled over during recent storms, knocking down power lines, destroying fences and, in one case on Middlefield Road, temporarily trapping residents inside.

Given the extent of the damage, several members of the City Council are now calling for the city to review and revise the recently implemented tree-protection ordinance, which the council approved last June.

When council members adopted the new rules on tree protection, their chief aim was to protect Palo Alto's canopy rather than protect residents from it. The new law roughly tripled the number of trees that were "protected" from removal by adding four new tree species — big leaf maple, incense cedar, blue oak and California black oak — to a roster that previously included only the coast live oak, the valley oak and the coast redwood.

More importantly, it classified all trees with diameters of greater than 15 inches as protected, well below the standard of 36 inches that was previously considered by the Planning and Transportation Commission. The only exceptions are redwoods, which are subject to a standard of 18 inches, and the protected species, which fall under a 11.5-inch standard.

For Russin, the new rules became a source of frustration last summer, when she reached out to the city to inquire about possibly removing the large Douglas fir, which was not protected under the prior ordinance but received protection under the new one because of its large size. She reached out to the Public Works Department last July to see if she could get a permit for removing the tree. For three weeks, she didn't get a clear answer on whether she could.

Then, on Aug. 1 she received an email response from a Public Works employee providing her with a link to the new tree ordinance. After Russin followed up, Public Works confirmed in an Aug. 4 email, which was reviewed by this news organization, that she could have removed the fir tree without a permit at the time that she had initially sent her inquiry. With the new ordinance in effect, she was no longer allowed to do so.

Russin said the city's response made her furious. She was disappointed by the city's delay, which prevented her from taking action until the new ordinance was in place. More importantly, she believes the ordinance is too restrictive when it comes to the preservation of trees on private properties.

"It never would have occurred to me that there would be an ordinance restricting what I could do in my backyard," Russin said.

The fallen tree has been removed now, but the damage to her home remains. A branch continues to poke through the crawlspace, and the back of the home, including the balcony area, reveals significant damage from the fir. As of last week, there was still a hole in her bedroom ceiling and a tarp over her bed, which hasn't been slept in since late March.

The city's tree ordinance has provisions that allow dead or hazardous trees to be removed, but Russin believes these don't go far enough. Before the fir fell, she said, she had two separate arborists look at it to see if it was diseased or posed a danger. Both concluded it did not.

The ordinance, she said, is based on an assumption that a tree-hazard risk is quantifiable. Her experience suggests it is not, she said.

"My tree proves that you can have two certified arborists look at the tree and not be able to tell that it will cause a huge amount of damage, risking property and lives in a very terrifying moment that I will not get back," she said. "We're fine, but seeing a giant fir tipping toward you and your toddler is a terrible feeling."

More troubles with the city

Russin isn't the only Palo Alto resident concerned about the city's slow response to requests for tree removal. Sanjiv Wadhwani, who lives in Crescent Park, had his own struggles to get the city to act after a tree that was on public land next to the San Francisquito Creek recently crashed through the fence of his Edgewood Drive home.

For him, the main issue wasn't the tree-protection ordinance but rather the bureaucratic inertia and lack of coordination between jurisdictions. Though he is a Palo Alto resident, the tree was on the Woodland Avenue side of the creek in East Palo Alto. When he called the city of Palo Alto to request that the tree be removed, he was directed to Valley Water, the water district that owns the right-of-way along the creek. Valley Water then informed him that the tree was not their responsibility and directed Wadhwani to the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, an agency tasked with boosting flood control, and to the city of East Palo Alto.

The problem for him came with a sense of urgency. While one tree fell, an adjoining one remained standing after the storm and Wadhwani thought it was only a matter of time before it would also fall onto this property.

After days of trying to navigate the labyrinth, Wadhwani finally got an assist from Kevin Lewis, Public Works supervisor in East Palo Alto. Despite uncertainty about whose responsibility it is, Lewis brought an arborist over who quickly removed the standing tree. Wadhani, meanwhile, had his gardener prune the portion of the fallen tree on his property so that he could repair the fence. The remaining portion of the falling tree still lay near the creek as of Tuesday morning, April 11, he said.

"I understand everybody is completely inundated with this issue, but if I'm telling you there is a problem and something is going to happen, why not take care of it first?" he said in an interview.

City Arborist Peter Gollinger did not respond to numerous emails from this news organization requesting an interview about the tree ordinance, but he responded to an emailed list of questions about the ordinance. He noted that trees that are deemed an "imminent hazard" by a certified arborist can be removed in an emergency without a completed tree removal permit.

"Staff is working on 'frequently asked questions' and other ways to share existing procedures and other resources with the public. Notably, these processes have not changed from previous versions of the ordinance," Gollinger wrote.

He also stated that the city has procedures in place for landowners whose properties are damaged by trees that have fallen from neighboring properties. These include directing the resident to work with the tree owner and providing information about a mediation program that could be used if needed. If the tree belongs to the city, he said, residents are encouraged to file a claim with the city.

When asked about potential changes to the ordinance, he said staff will be "evaluating data and community input to date and will be returning to the Council in the summer with a status update and other information."

Safety versus canopy

Some council members, however, believe the city should move even faster to re-evaluate the tree ordinance, particularly given the recent influx of citizen concerns about new tree rules. Some, like Fairmeadow resident Naveena Bereny, argued in an email that the new ordinance "favors trees over a homeowner's safety and rights." That, she wrote to the council, is "just plain wrong."

"Trees don't pay taxes; residents do. The recent tree ordinance, passed last year with little feedback from the community, also expanded the definition of protected trees and added more restrictions to maintenance of private trees," Bereny wrote. "It also made this process more expensive. Residents have the right to manage the trees on their properties for the safety of their families and to protect their property."

Council members Julie Lythcott-Haims and Pat Burt both suggested at recent council meetings that they want to see the tree ordinance revisited sooner rather than later. Lythcott-Haims said at the March 26 council meeting that the city is "due for re-evaluation of the new ordinance."

And while the council had agreed last June to revisit the ordinance a year after implementation, Burt recommended doing so even sooner.

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't be so concerned if we slipped a few months on that, but given the situation this year of a triple whammo of trees having been weakened by many years of drought, compounded by historic rains and historic winds, we just have to do what we can to get back to this sooner," Burt said at the council's April 3 meeting.

In an interview, Burt said he doesn't have in mind the specific types of adjustments the city should make to the ordinance. He does, however, believe it's important to take a "deeper dive" into the topic and to consider how the ordinance can be changed to reduce future risk caused by extreme weather events, he said.

"I think that basically we need to look at enabling people to reduce the threat of mature trees on their own properties," Burt said. "We need to enable people to do that while still continuing to invest in our canopy."

Burt said some of the most passionate advocates for tree preservation seem to believe that trees in an urban environment should be preserved indefinitely, a position that he called fundamentally flawed. The city's canopy, he said, is naturally evolving. It's important to acknowledge that some of the older trees will eventually die and to determine which trees are important enough to warrant preservation for as long as possible, he added.

The forthcoming conversation about tree preservation should also include a discussion of the types of new trees that the city should promote over others, Burt said. Eucalyptus trees, for example, which are prone to toppling over, should be discouraged, while indigenous species that are more resilient in the face of local climate challenges should be encouraged.

The council also needs to look at the proper balance of tree species on public property, Burt said. This examination should include the appropriate types of trees and the best ways to nurture the city's canopy while keeping it safe and sustainable. It should also consider ways to enable people to lower their own risks from falling trees.

Not everyone, however, feels that the city should be moving to revise the ordinance. Karen Holman, a former mayor and council member who served on an ad hoc committee that helped draft the new tree-protection ordinance, said that she had not heard any complaints about the ordinance before the recent spell of extreme weather.

"People are just getting used to it, especially professional tree companies and individuals," Holman said. "It's a new rollout and it's a significant change. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding."

Some of the benefits of the new ordinance have yet to be realized, she said. The city, for example, is expecting to post a guide for safely pruning trees, an activity that Holman noted has always been legal and remains so. This should help both the property owners with trees in their yards and the residents who are concerned about trees getting hacked down at other properties.

It's possible, given the city's recent experiences, that there might be some nuances in the city's ordinance that may need to be "changed around the edges."

But she cautioned against basing revisions on anecdotes from residents submitted during one of the most extreme weather events in years.

"How does one design an ordinance around any topic that plans for the most extreme example, which are the storms we just encountered?" Holman asked. "The alternative is to allow anyone to take down any trees, and then we lose the benefits of trees."

Correction: The story has previously misidentified the California black oak, which is one of the newly protected tree species. It had also stated that the city had previously prohibited removal of trees with diameters of greater than 36 inches. While the Planning and Transportation Commission had considered a proposal with the 36-inch standard, this was not a city requirement.