Plumber Gabriel Moreti injured as massive False Azalea tree topples over in Primrose Gardens

Published: 20th January, 2011
by TOM FOOT

A PLUMBER is lucky to be alive after being crushed by a 40-foot tree that suddenly became uprooted and toppled over.

Gabriel Moreti suffered head injuries after the rotten False Azalea fell onto a road in Primrose Gardens, Belsize Park, at around noon on Sunday.

The 27-year-old dived into his van after his boss, Steve Roos, saw the tree “starting to shake” and yelled at him to take cover.

Mr Moreti, who lives in Adelaide Road, said: “I was minding my own business and then I heard Steve shout: ‘Get in the ****ing van!’ I looked up and the tree was already coming half way down on top of me. It hit me hard on the back. If I had been a child I would be dead.”

Mr Roos, who lives in Primrose Gardens, said: “I heard this kind of whining noise and so I looked out and saw the tree was about to fall. When I got down there, it was like a horror film. There was blood all over the van and coming out of his head.”

A London Ambulance Service spokeswoman said staff “treated one patient, a man in his 20s, who was taken to the Royal Free Hospital with head injuries”.

Chunky log-size branches sent Mr Moreti sprawling into a metal tool box in the van, slicing a “C”-shaped wound above his left eye. He had big black and blue bruises on his back and legs when the New Journal interviewed him on Tuesday.

A Camden Council spokesman wished him  a speedy recovery, insisting that Mr Moreti had only suffered “minor injuries” and blaming “high winds” for the “irregular occurrence”.

The spokesman said a summer inspection had failed to identify the “significant decay” but Mr Roos claimed rot was clearly visible.

Mr Moreti said his mother was “very upset” after he emailed her photographs of his injuries. He said that since coming to Camden from Venice nine months ago he had been robbed in Kilburn, lost money in a fake landlord scam, and now been crushed by a massive tree.

He said: “I grew up in the old Yugoslavia – but I think I was surviving better during the Bosnian war.”

Specialist tree surgeons disposing of the False Azalea – also known as a Black Locust – on Tuesday told the New Journal the tree was “totally rotten” and that fungus or brown rot was the likely cause.

Gian Banchero, who lives in Primrose Gardens, said: “Given that the council spends so much time pollarding trees, it’s surprising they haven’t been more careful with this one. The guy could have been killed.” 

The Town Hall spokesman said: “Our  previous inspections of the tree prior to this inci­dent indicate that this was a highly unusual event, as despite appearing healthy it had significant decay within its core.”

In October, a tree crashed down near Hampstead primary schools and in 2009 three giant trees were uprooted in quick succession, one landing on a minicab driver in West Hampstead and another hitting a moving lorry in Lyndhurst Road.