Wilmington, North Carolina, woke up to heartbreak. Overnight, a stand of century-old live oak trees vanished. WWAY News shared the shock many felt seeing bare dirt where giants once stood tall on Wrightsville Avenue.
“These were absolutely outstanding legacy trees. Just beautiful,” resident Nina Brown said, per WWAY News. Now, there’s only emptiness.
Johnson Development Associates cut the trees to make way for a new build. The South Carolina-based company used an old Wilmington city code to bypass newer, stricter protections. Mayor Bill Saffo explained that removing those trees would have been far harder under today’s code, WWAY News reported…