A 16-year-old girl was injured when a 10-year-old ficus tree in the Plaza de Santo Domingo in Murcia literally collapse around her. The fallen boughs and branches weighed around 12 tonnes.

Two other people standing nearby had to be treated for shock.

The Mayor, José Ballesta, explained that the high temperatures could be behind the incident. He also assured that the tree is inspected each year by the Town Hall, the last inspection being four weeks ago and “no anomaly was detected.”

The incident occurred shortly before 12.51h, which was when the emergency number 112 received a call about the tree to say that there were people trapped beneath the fallen branches. However, when the fire service arrived they confirmed that this was not the case, thankfully.

The teenage girl was taken to Hospital Reina Sofía with slight injuries, together with two other people suffering from shock. In the meantime, the debris had been completely cleared within an hour, according to the Mayor.

However, work continued throughout the day as a motorised crane with a 34-metres reach was used to remove any upper branches that could have been weakened.

In the year 2000 a falling branch from the same tree killed a man.

Meanwhile, over in Colombia a female doctor (see photo) was killed when a nurse fell on her from the 7th floor of a hospital. The nurse survived. It is still not clear whether the fall was fruit of a suicide attempt.

The doctor had been sitting on a café terrace within an enclosed central patio of the hospital.

(News: Murcia, Spain)