By Taylor Lane, Bryan Horwath
Las Vegas Review-Journal
LAS VEGAS — A man died after being found unresponsive in a palm tree 25 feet in the air Wednesday afternoon, according to the Las Vegas Fire Department.
The Fire Department said crews worked to rescue the man stuck in the tree in the 2000 block of East Bonanza Road, near 20th Street, but the man was unresponsive upon arrival and died at the scene.
It was not immediately known if the man was a tree trimmer, but two tree trimmers have died in Las Vegas in the past decade while trimming palm tree fronds.
Just after 5 p.m., Metropolitan Police Department officers and fire department officials remained at the scene. Two palm trees were seen in front of a row of houses.
Several people were allowed to go past a makeshift barricade and could be seen embracing one another near the homes.
One onlooker told a reporter she was waiting to pick up her boyfriend from one of the homes, though authorities had not yet let her through.
In 2015, a tree trimmer died after being trapped in a palm tree, and another man died in 2016 after several palm tree fronds weighing approximately 500 pounds fell onto his chest, the Review-Journal reported after both incidents.
A man in 2009 also died after dead palm fronds collapsed on him while trimming a tree near the Boulevard Mall .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in 2015 that drought across the Western United States may lead to palm trees becoming heavy with fronds, which can potentially crush workers trimming trees from underneath the fronds.
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