Where were the roots?

Dear Editor,

Just a comment concerning the [Aug. 15] article on some improvements to the water's edge land at Waterviews [at the Reservoir]. What caught my eye was the number of 1-2 foot high stumps that were visible from Hurricane Isabel.

This storm came through our woods, and every few seconds there was this awful sound at first, a crack and then a crash. [The photo showed] the trees weren't broken off, so that they had to be cut and left with stumps in the ground. It didn't get the young trees; it got the biggest of them all, and they weren't broken.

[What I experienced during Isabel was] whole trees laid down on their sides with roots attached coming up out of the ground. The only small trees that got hit were ones the large ones fell onto, and it wasn't that many, and most of them didn't break off. The woods in Chesterfield County are still full of these large uprooted trees and will be for a long time to come.

So to say Isabel took out the young trees and left the large ones puzzles me.

M. Keller

Chester