Can this tree be saved?

[InBetweenDays]

On Sunday there was an accident at the intersection in front of our house. A car went up on to the sidewalk, took out part of our street tree, and came to a rest against our (brand new) fence. Thankfully no one seemed seriously injured although two people went to the hospital.

The tree is a star magnolia. The car took out about half of it all the way down to the base. I'm wondering if it's worth trying to save? Is there something we can put on the "wound" of the trunk to prevent disease and rot? Here are some pictures of the tree.


You can see the left side of the tree is gone.


One trunk was broken off at the base.


Also took out part of a limb.

[InBetweenDays]

And just because it was crazy here is a photo of the car against the fence (the fence amazingly wasn't damaged at all).

[simpsongal]

Defer to treed' since she's the expert but I think it looks like it'll be ok.

You might want to bring in an arborist/tree person to make a clean cut at the base (at least ensure it won't pool water there and lead to rot/bug infestation, and I'd probably trim below the other break too. I think sealing cuts is sort of out of fashion unless there's a lot of sap running at this time of year (like a fruit tree?).

Yikes to the car pic! What happened?

[InBetweenDays]

Thanks simpsongal , I suggested we bring in an arborist (we have someone who regularly trims our other trees) but H thought we could deal with this ourselves. But I'm going to move forward with consulting the arborist.

Regarding what happened - we didn't see it so I can't say for sure. But we live on a corner with a 2-way stop sign. East/West traffic doesn't have a stop sign. North/South does. But it is the only stop sign on the north/south street out of probably 15 intersections in over a mile (Seattle is notorious for having unmarked intersections on neighborhood streets) so I think people aren't expecting it (even though you shouldn't blow through any intersection without looking for traffic). Plus there is work going on with the house across the street and they have a dumpster that I think is blocking the stop sign.

So according to the driver that ended up against our fence, the other driver ran the stop sign and t-boned him. Both cars were totaled. We've had issues with people running this stop sign for the 14 years we've lived here but the city won't do anything unless there are 3 reported accidents in a year. We've had more than 3 accidents in a year, but many are minor and don't get reported to the police/city. The area is very popular with bikes and pedestrians so I am just thankful no one was on the corner when this happened.

Here's the other car

[nicolewi]

No idea about the tree, but WOW! Glad your fence ended up okay.