After a storm, the tree that fell is the easy part
Robinson Tree Service · Memphis, TN
Everyone calls about the tree on the ground. The one that worries us is the one still upright with a cracked limb in it.
The morning after a bad night, the phone rings about the obvious thing — an oak across the driveway, a limb on the roof, a fence flattened. That tree has already done what it was going to do. It is a cleanup job, and cleanup jobs are the straightforward end of this work.
What we would rather be called about is everything that did not come down.
The wind that found one weak limb found all of them
Straight-line winds take the weakest wood first. If one limb failed on your property, the same gust went through every other tree you own and found whatever else was marginal. Most of it is still up there.
- Hanging limbs caught in the canopy — broken clean off but held by other branches, waiting for the next gust or simply for gravity to finish it.
- Cracked limbs that have not dropped. A split at the union can be half-open and almost invisible from the ground, and the limb stays up for weeks before it goes.
- Loosened root plates. The tree did not fall, but it moved. You can sometimes see it in soil lifted or cracked on the opposite side from the lean.
- Torn stubs where a limb ripped out rather than broke clean. Those do not heal well, and they are where decay gets in over the next few years.
A limb hanging in a canopy is the thing that hurts people after a storm, because it is quiet and it looks like part of the tree. Do not stand under one, and do not let anybody try to pull it down with a rope from the ground.
What we see most, by species
Oaks and hackberries tend to lose limbs — a primary branch tears out of a weak union and the rest of the tree is fine. Pine fails differently. It snaps rather than tears, usually high up, and it usually goes in wind rather than under its own weight. On the north side of the county, where a lot of the subdivisions went in with pines along the drives and fence lines, that is most of what we clear.
Before you touch anything
- Anything touching a wire is not yours to deal with, and not ours either until the power is off. Stay away from it, keep everyone else away from it, and call MLGW first.
- Photograph it before anything moves. If you are going to claim, the pictures taken before cleanup are worth more than the ones taken after.
- Do not walk the yard looking up. Look up from somewhere you are not standing underneath anything.
- Chainsaws and storm-damaged wood are a bad pairing. Broken limbs are under tension and move in directions that are not obvious when the cut releases them.
A word about the insurance
Broadly, and this varies by policy: when a tree hits something — the house, the garage, a fence — there is usually cover, and that often includes getting the tree off it. When a tree simply falls over in your yard and hits nothing, removal is frequently not covered at all. People are regularly surprised by that, and it is worth knowing which situation you are in before you start calling around for prices.
We will put what we find in writing for a claim, whether or not the work comes to us.
Why we end up on the same three streets for a week
Storm damage arrives in clusters, not evenly. One bad night in late June put us on a handful of streets in Bartlett for a solid week — ten separate jobs, all within a few blocks, all from the same squall line. The wind did not pick houses at random; it followed a path, and everything marginal along that path failed at once.
Which is worth knowing for a practical reason: if your neighbors are having trees cleared this week, that is a reasonable prompt to have yours looked at, even if nothing of yours came down.
The trucks that show up uninvited
After every significant storm, crews appear from out of town, knock on doors in the worst-hit streets, and offer to start immediately for cash. Some are fine. Enough are not that it is worth slowing down for five minutes.
- Ask for the certificate of insurance and actually read the dates on it. If a crew is hurt on your property or drops a limb through your roof, an uninsured outfit leaves that with you and your homeowner's policy.
- Be wary of a large deposit up front, and of pressure to decide while they are standing there.
- Get the price in writing before anything starts, including whether the wood is being hauled away or left on your lawn.
- A local company can be found again in six months. That matters more than it sounds.
The cheaper version of all this
Most storm damage we clear was predictable before the storm. Deadwood that had been there a year, a limb with a visible crack, a canopy so dense it caught the wind like a sail instead of letting it through.
Thinning a canopy properly lets wind pass through it. Taking the deadwood out removes the pieces most likely to come down on something. Neither is expensive next to a crane lifting an oak off a roof at two in the morning, and both can be done on an ordinary weekday in winter when nobody is in a hurry.
If a storm has just been through, we will come and walk the property and tell you what we see. That is free, a certified arborist does it, and if your trees came through fine we will say so.
If this is your situation
Questions about a tree on your property? 901-363-3539, or send us a note. Estimates and preventative check-ups are free.
More from us
Or email us for a free preventative check-up for your trees.
Fill out the form and tell us what kind of tree service is needed: from tree removal, trimming, to firewood or just a health check. We have a certified arborist and professional crews who know the trees of Memphis.