PORT ANGELES — Tall fir trees fell in Lincoln Park on Monday as removal of eight in the flight path of a nearby airport continued.
Lincoln Park remains fully closed today — due to reopen Wednesday morning — while crews contracted with the Port of Port Angeles remove seven city-owned trees, plus an eighth on port-owned property.
The trees are being removed as an emergency measure to restore full use of William R. Fairchild International Airport to the west.
It is a separate project from a proposal to remove all Lincoln Park trees that obstruct the runway approach.
The Federal Aviation Administration has declared that the eight trees were in the flight path for nighttime or bad-weather instrument landings and has restricted night landings on Runway 26, the airport’s main east-west runway.
Jerry Ludke, the port’s airport and marinas manager, said the FAA has assured him the restrictions would be lifted soon after confirmation that the trees have been removed.
Most of the Lincoln Park trees are in the westernmost portion of the park near the off-leash dog park, while the seventh lies to the north near the city-owned baseball fields.
The offending port tree is near the Clallam County Juvenile Detention Facility along 18th Street.
The port signed a $19,512 contract with Port Angeles-based Blue Mountain Tree Service to complete the work, which involving removing each tree and grinding the remaining stump down to ground level, Ludke said.
The trees are Douglas and white firs and stand “in the neighborhood of 100 feet,” he said.
The project to remove remaining trees in the airport’s flight path is pending an environmental assessment, expected to take 18 months starting in 2015, and then require approval by the City Council.
