Newton Loses 45 Trees, including 250-Year-Old Tree, In Storm

NEWTON, MA — The storm Monday felled about 45 city street trees in Newton, damaging homes and cutting off power, costing the city around $160,000 to clean up, according to the mayor's office.

During the entire last fiscal year, Newton lost 31 trees, according to the city.

"Forty five trees is a significant number," said Newton Superintendent of Urban Forestry Marc Welch in a statement.

One of the trees that Newton lost was a 250-year-old Locust tree. The tree was planted in the 1770s at the Jackson Homestead museum on Washington Street, according to museum officials.

Welch and the Newton Forestry Team and a subcontractor spent about 36 hours cleaning up trees and limb damage across the city.

According to the mayor, at the height of cleanup, they had six bucket trucks, five log trucks and two chip trucks responding to about 350 locations.

A number of polls came down on Winchester Street and more than 1,000 electricity customers were without power for some time, especially on Suffolk and Wiswall roads and Lowell Avenue, as crews worked to deal with live wires. On Thursday, nine customers in Newton were still without power, according to MEMA's outage map.