Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

This week saw the start of additional and preventive inspections of 900 date palms presenting similar conditions and features to the tree that fell on Thursday in Carrer de Joaquim Costa, causing the death of a young 20-year-old woman. Date palms that experts have any doubts over will be felled to minimise risks. An independent external report has already been commissioned to determine the exact cause of the palm tree’s collapse.

Preventive inspections are being made in palm trees presenting three factors that may have to do with the collapse of the top part of a palm tree in Plaça d’Emili Vendrell: water stress, resulting from the drought; a narrowing and tilting of the trunk, and the presence of a parakeet nest.

Should there be the least doubt in these inspections, experts will order the felling of the palm trees in question, as they have already done in eight other cases. At the same time, a boosted irrigation process for date palms has been started, to reduce their water stress.

The Parks and Gardens protocol for analysing the state of palm trees is already one of the most restrictive of its kind, with parameters above those set by current directives. Even so, and in the wake of Thursday’s unfortunate occurrence, once the commissioned report’s final results are available the plan is an intensification of the inspection and treatment protocol for the date palms.