FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – A massive live oak known locally as “Kate’s Tree” lost one of its huge limbs early Sunday, sending the branch crashing into a nearby home and prompting inspections from city arborists and conservationists.
Pastor Granardo Felix of Trinity United Methodist Church said he and his family were asleep when the limb struck about 5:20 a.m. Sunday. The branch hit his son’s room, tore off part of the porch and shook the house, Felix said. No one was seriously injured.
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“It sounded like thunder, but it wasn’t raining,” Felix said. He called the impact “devastating” and added that the timing could have been far worse if it had fallen during a busy event. Church members are helping the family find temporary housing.
David Neville, the city arborist, said three arborists examined the tree within 24 hours. From ground level, they found signs of white rot inside the trunk that would have been difficult to detect externally. Neville said prolonged drought followed by heavy rains likely increased stress on the tree, and the added weight contributed to the limb’s failure.
“This tree is kind of the symbol of our city,” Neville said. “When something happened to it, we jumped on it as soon as we could.”
The oak stands at the corner of Ash and 7th streets beside the historic Bailey House, where Katherine Bailey lived about a century ago.
Local lore holds that Bailey fiercely protected the tree — at times chaining herself to it and threatening workers with a shotgun — and the road was built around the tree to preserve it, Diana Herman of the Amelia Tree Conservancy said.
“We’re all almost emotionally tied to her, to this tree,” Herman said, noting an outpouring of messages after the limb fell.
Neville said crews removed the broken limb and that the tree appears stable for now. He added that officials do not consider it a danger to drivers and expect to have a plan of action in a few days.