SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco parks official Wednesday said that a tree -- whose massive limb fell off in a wind storm and crushed a woman to death in the city's popular Stern Grove Park -- had been evaluated and was not designated for removal.

Rec And Parks spokeswoman Rosemary Dennis denied a report published in Wednesday's San Francisco Examiner that the city had been warned about that tree was a potential hazard in a report complied by Pleasanton-based HortScience.

"The tree was evaluated by the study commissioned by the Rec and Parks Department," she said. "It was slated for additional evaluation, but not slated for removal…Each tree had been evaluated. The trees rated high in the 10-12 range -- meaning needs to be removed -- those trees were evaluated and worked on first… The tree involved in this incident was not in that category."

Dennis said crews faced a stiff challenge keeping the wooded park's trees maintained.

"No matter how much effort is put in to tree maintenance," she told KTVU. "The reality is that trees are living things and they can fail no matter what."

Kathleen Bolton died in April when a massive tree limb fell on her in Stern Grove's parking lot after walking her dog.

Kathy Skillicorn, who befriended Bolton while walking their dogs in Stern Grove, told KTVU that she has not been able to return to the popular neighborhood park.

"She was one of my closest friends," Skillicorn said. "I'm staying away. It's a beautiful park, but I lost my best friend."

Skillicorn was also angered by the newspaper report.

"If it is true that the tree was identified as a hazard, I would have thought they would have done something about it," she told KTVU.

The Examiner reported that HortScience examined all 2,600 trees in the park and recommended which trees needed attention. The park has both redwood and eucalyptus trees.

“On an ongoing basis, all those trees are looked at,” Dennis told the Examiner. “Our first line was dealing with the worst trees, which this tree was not.”

Steven Haines, executive director of the annual Stern Grove Festival, told the paper he was optimistic that the accident won’t deter an estimated 100,000 from turning out to attend the annual concert series at the park this summer.