A 75-foot tree fell on a group of kids at a summer camp outside Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon, injuring eight, including two who were sent to a nearby hospital in critical condition.
The 75-year-old pine tree fell around 4:45 p.m. without warning in Brookside Park, just outside the Kidspace Children’s Museum in Pasadena,
according to Fox News. A group of kids had been waiting outside for their parents to pick them up at 5 p.m. when the tree crashed to the ground, pinning eight of them underneath its branches.
“I heard a tree crack, and then I turned around, and I saw little kids running, then I saw the tree fall on top of the little kids, maybe about five or seven of them. I ran over there with a bunch of parents and we just started going through the tree and the bushes and
we started pulling them out,” witness Greg Prodigalidad told KABC-TV.
Hanna Lin, a volunteer at the museum,
told The Associated Press her 6- and 7-year-old daughters attended the camp that day, and although they escaped unscathed from the fall, the two girls were crying and extremely shaken up.
"I myself saw two children carried out on stretchers and they were pretty bloody," Lin told KABC-TV. "That brought tears to my eyes."
The museum’s CEO, Michael Shanklin, is compiling individual incident reports from each of the staff members involved during the crash to attempt to piece together what exactly happened, according to KABV-TV.
"When I received word that there was a tree that fell over and some of the Kidspace children ... were affected by the tree falling, we got staff on site immediately to clear the scene, get children out of harm's way. And at that point we got a headcount and ensured that we did have accountability for all children, and that's really when the first responders, who did a fabulous job, arrived on scene,” Shanklin said, according to Fox News.
Pasadena also hired an independent arborist to investigate why the seemingly healthy pine tree could have fallen over and injured the children on a beautiful summer day with minimal wind, according to KABC-TV.
Despite the fact that California is currently experiencing a severe drought, it is not yet clear whether or not the drought played a role in the tree toppling to the ground.