San Jose will cut the dying palms at its downtown Circle of Palms as an "emergency removal" — a designation that skips the standard 14-day public notice and appeal period. The cause of the die-off is still under investigation.

The barricades went up around the Circle of Palms last week — metal panels and hazard signs ringing the trees on South Market Street, between the San Jose Museum of Art and the Fairmont. This week the city said the palms aren't just fenced off; they're coming down.

San Jose is doing the work as an "emergency removal," a designation that lets crews skip the standard 14-day public notice and appeal period once cutting begins. No trees had come down as of Monday, Colin Heyne, a spokesperson for the city's Department of Transportation, told the Mercury News; the city is still assessing how many of the roughly 30 palms have to go.

In a social-media post, the city said "several" of the palms had been "found to be dead or dying" and framed the closure as a safety measure ahead of the weekend's San Jose Jazz Summer Fest. "City crews are barricading the area to keep the public safe," the post read, asking people to "avoid the designated hazard area." Events booked for the plaza were moved to other venues.

What is killing the trees is still under investigation. Heyne said the likely culprits are pests — palm weevils among them — or fungal or bacterial disease, and that a palm can look green and still be infected, which is part of why the count of doomed trees keeps moving.

The Circle of Palms sits directly across from the downtown park formerly known as Plaza de Cesar Chavez, and the removal marks the second stage of a fast-moving story on this block: first the fence, now the emergency order. The museum across the plaza remains open. What's different this week is what comes next — when the saws arrive, they can arrive without the two-week warning that would normally precede them.