Danger aloft - Sky Tree !

Today's Aberdeen Evening Express carries a report that a chunk of granite had fallen from a shopfront in Union Street forcing the pavement to be closed for safety reasons. That this happens now not only during the first Aberdeen Granite Festival but comes to light on the day of the event's (fully booked) city centre walking tour is unfortunate.

Many of us in the city have been very concerned about the general state of buildings in Aberdeen for a long time and the apparent lack of urgency shown by the authorities in sorting things out. There's a thriving group on facebook where people who love and care for the city try and document examples of deterioration of buildings and facilities in the cityscape. The 2011 documentary Run Down Aberdeen by local filmmaker Fraser Denholm gives a great overview.

Anyway, having been shown the newspaper headline, I went to have a look and there are now workers patching it up (horse, stable door etc. :-) ). So I looked up to the skies on a street near Union Street and snapped this sky tree ...

... the tree's roots are opening a fissure and pushing this heavy granite block out towards the street ... with the tree flourishing its branches will catch the wind giving extra leverage and perhaps push the block out further. At best, sometime someone will hear a bang and a few car alarms will go off and there will be a big bit of granite on the pavement. Falling masonry is no joke - it has previously led to loss of life in Edinburgh.

Now in multi-occupancy/ownership buildings I'm not sure who has the responsibility to fix this ... but I do think that the council has the responsibility to locate and document things like this before someone gets hurt. The concerned citizens who make up Run Down Aberdeen do their best to spot things like this but having documented them, the authorities should work to ensure public safety.