Tree Branch Kills 6-Month-Old: Who Is to Blame?

I would rename the title of this post to:

Tree Branch Kills Six Month Old: How can we help the family cope with the devastation of their loss

And would add information that is helpful to the family.

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Lenore is a great writer and while this may not be about specific grief counseling -- it is life counseling. What we can do is understand that there is not always someone or something to blame for tragic accidents or tragedies. It is a part of everyone's life in some way or another - and perhaps inculcating that understanding helps when bad things do happen to good people.
Barbara

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Diva: if you would re-name the title of the piece and then re-word the entire article, then do it. What is stopping you? Since Lenore didn't name it exactly what you wanted or take the tone of exactly what you think is appropriate I'm thinking that she's not going to take the immense lesson you want her to take from your quippy little response. It is a horrible thing that has happened and no one has said otherwise. As a blogger, though, Lenore chose to address her comments, not to the family concerned, but to the rest of us. deal with it.

Lenore: Amen. I liked when the park ranger reported to amNY I think, that the park would remain open the next day and that they weren't expecting any more branches to fall. If they were to cut all the trees down the vendor would quickly find himself up a certain creek without a paddle, no trees = no visitors = no overpriced pretzel purchases.

I thought I heard that it happened at the central park zoo, not that it makes any difference either way.

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While I can agree with your point, Lenore, it is the cold way in which you chose the arrangement of some of your words that is going to prove upsetting to some people. I agree that a blaming a person (,city, organization...) is unfair to some extent. However, when a 6 month old child is ripped from their mother's arms and killed by having their precious little self basically crushed or smashed, one might not choose to be beyond emotion and mock the grieving family for wanting someone to help pay the expenses incurred due to such a gruesome tragedy. Lawsuits can be frivolous, true. Should these poor folks have to take out a loan to pay for the funeral/burial of their child who was killed (by an accident) on city property? I think there should be a middle ground. I also encourage you to have some consideration for those readers with real human emotions. Text book - right, application - maybe not.

...but that's just one mother's opinion.

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Another parenting site had an article on this event. It was all "OMG OMG OMG OMG this could happen to anyone OMG it could happen to me OMG OMG what can I do to avoid it OMG there has to be something I have to avoid OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG . . . .

which is not exactly helpful either.

I too believe that acts of God happen.

Funny thing is, when something serendipitous happens, few people go around looking for someone to compensate for their good fortune. But when something bad happens, . . . . I understand the family is grief-stricken and anger and denial are part of the grieving process. So I really don't want to dump on them for having the though to sue. BUT how much you wanna bet there is a lawyer and a bunch of other people unrelated to this child who are encouraging this lawsuit? That's what's really wrong here. I feel terrible for that family, but they need to move on, not dwell on what could have been done differently for the next several years.

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i think what happened was really bad the maitance crew of central park should watch for those kind of things that is their job to cut limbs off of trees if they need it but the question is do they even check it was oviously loose i feel for this family i ceartainly woulndt go back to cetral park

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What we;re forgetting here is that this has happened BEFORE in Central Park. Recently enough that it should have been something maintenance and conservancy staff were keeping an eye out for. Large tree branches rarely fall without mitigating factors. Was the tree ill? Struck by lightening? Weakened by drought or floods? Struck by another object? The favored roosting spot of some animal far too large for said branch? Those questions need to be answered. If maintenance and the conservancy can't answer them and took no steps to limit the danger, they are at fault.

Say it is just fate is definitely in bad taste. If the infant and mother were struck by a drunk driver would that have been fate as well? I think not.

I'm all for being pragmatic and practical, but you are suggesting utter calousness. Let's see how you'd feel if fate decided to visit you and yours in the same way.

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Lenore -- Central Park is not the wilderness, it can't even be compared with one of our regular state parks. It's a park filled with walking paths and a gazillion people. I agree that we live in an overly litigious society, but I think a re-evaluation of Central Park's maintenance staff is not beyond the bounds of reality following this tragedy. I fully agree with other posters who stated your attitude in this particular case is cold/callous. These parents are just trying to cope with an awful tragedy. Mocking their grief is entirely unnecessary. Not to mention, that you don't know their financial situation. Perhaps they need the money to pay for hospital expenses, funeral costs, etc. It might be easy to act glib sitting on the outside, but until you've walked in these poor parents shoes, a little respect wouldn't hurt. I will give you props on stating that extremes are bad. You're right. Too bad you didn't realize how extreme your views sound in this particular case.

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When it happened before in Central Park it was during a big snowstorm and everyone in the city had been told to stay out of the park. A man did not and he was killed by a falling branch.

This is my last comment, but since when has grief become synonymous with law suits? I did not see Lenore mocking their grief, but I do see her mocking their law suit.

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I agree with Lenore. While I do feel badly for what happened to the family, they have no business suing the city. If people sue cities every time their kids get hurt at the park or under a tree in a neighborhood, or what have you, cities will chop down the large old trees and pave over the parks. I'd rather tell the family, "We're deeply sorry for what happened to your child, but accidents do happen. The city is not to blame for what happened. We will help you with funeral costs, but you will not win a lawsuit for millions of dollars."

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Loved your post. Reminds me of Joni Mitchell and her song about visiting trees in a tree museum.

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You gotta laugh at all the people reading this article, completely missing the point, and immediately trying to blame this terible ACCIDENT

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I agree with this article. If the parents are looking for money to help pay for expenses, they have other options beyond suing. They could set up an account people could donate to, they could take a loan out, or even borrow from family/friends.

This should be a lesson to eveybody to BUY LIFE INSURANCE. No one want to think about their children dying, but a crazy twist of fate like this can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. You should not have the right to sue because you were not financially prepared.

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Topic #19 in Fifty Dangerous Things is "Stand on the Roof", which encourages parents to help their kids get up on the roof of their house and have a look around. A reporter recently asked me "What do you say to the parent whose child fall off of the roof and dies?" - this is the trump card of the narrow-minded. It is the same end-move in the game of escalation that happens when talking to administrators about letting children ride bikes to school.

The truth is that there are more than 81 million children living in the United States at any given moment, and chance plays a part in their lives. Someone in California will get bitten by a shark, someone will get hit by a piece of debris that falls off of an airplane, someone will be struck by lightning - for any given individual, the chances are infinitesimal, but when you multiply even the tiniest number by 81 million and again by 12-14 hours of activity, the chance that someone, somewhere, will meet an untimely end in a seemingly random manner becomes non-zero. As a physicist once told me, everything that can happen, will happen, eventually.

My heart goes out the parents of the child killed by the falling branch, but if they had been walking in a National Park, or hanging out in their grandparents back yard would we think of the "blame" equation differently?

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that's the thing about life- you don't get out of it alive.

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I couldn't agree with you more. It is strange that in our society things that happen always have to be someone's fault.

I have run across this quite a bit in the pediatric cancer community. My son died of a rare cancer that has no known cause. He was two when he got it. There is no one to blame, no one to sue but plenty of parents in our shoes desperately try to find something. Most cannot live with the fact that it "just happened". However, that is the truth. Accidents happen, tree branches fall, kids get cancer. It is a harsh world. When did we get the idea that we are somehow promised full lives of our children? We are lucky our advances have cut childhood mortality but it is not zero. Children die. I see every day people who don't want to face this fact. I see it when I can tell they would rather not talk to me because I am that truth looking at them right in the eye. Children die, accidents happen. It sucks, but it is part of life.

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