Near Carlton and Dean, drill rig expels dirt, blows out car window, street trees damaged

Leading up to the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting next Tuesday, consider a few recent incident reports on Atlantic Yards Watch.

On 1/29/15 at 8:10 am, a vehicle at the Dean Street and Carlton Avenue intersection lost a window after a "clump of dirt," according to the driver, was expelled from a drill rig inside the construction site.

And this is not, apparently, a new phenomenon, as Dean Street resident Peter Krashes wrote:

I was passing by this morning and found an understandably upset driver being interviewed by a Roux-uniformed employee with a clipboard on Dean Street. Her car and the Roux-labeled truck were stopped in the travel lane.
The driver claimed a "clump of dirt" had flown threw the air and hit her side window as she drove by. The car was passing by the drill rig at the time. Her side window was shattered. She noted that if sitting near the window, her child would have been injured. Photo is attached.
I filed a complaint about this drill rig apparently spraying dirt outside the perimeter fence on Tuesday. The situation I documented was from Thursday, Jan. 22nd. Here is the link, which itself has links to the past history of this kind of event at the site:

The tree outside 654 Dean

If I remember correctly, when cars and pedestrians were hit by debris from a rig next to Vanderbilt Avenue, a safety net structure was placed around the drill rig.

Street trees damaged

According to another report filed by Krashes, the construction fence that encroaches on major sections of Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, and on Carlton between Dean and Pacific streets has damaged two additional street trees on top of a previous episode of damage.

According to the incident report, which dates the damage to 1/30/15, 4 pm:

Vehicles need to pull up on the sidewalk in order to load or unload, or if an emergency vehicle needs to pass. They pull up on top of tree beds as though they are the same as sidewalks.

Since there is a fire house and a police station nearby, (and since some of the means of egress for the firehouse are narrowed by construction work), emergency vehicles pass by regularly at the same time the street is more regularly clogged by traffic.

The street tree outside 638 Dean

The tree in front of 654 Dean Street appears to have been damaged by a vehicle pulled up on the tree bed. A no parking sign (also illegal) may have been attached by a contractor working on 654 Dean which is currently under construction. The street tree at 638 Dean Street (my house) was hit higher up in the tree, likely by a taller truck. Tire tracks have cut across its tree bed as well.

The damage to these trees should be associated with the damage to the tree outside 530 Carlton Avenue that is also the byproduct of the narrowing of the travel lanes by the construction fence.