Hazardous limbs and storm damage

What to do in the first hour

If anything is touching a power line, stop and call the utility. Not me, not a neighbor with a chainsaw. A limb across a line can energize the whole tree and the ground around it. Nobody should be within reach of it, including me, until the line is confirmed dead.

Get people and cars out from under it. That includes the room under it — if a limb is sitting on the roof over a bedroom, sleep somewhere else tonight.

Take photographs before anything moves. Wide shots and close ones. Your insurer will want them, and a photo taken before cleanup is worth more than a description afterwards.

Then text me the photos. I can tell a lot from a picture — whether it's hanging or resting, whether the trunk is compromised, whether it needs to happen tonight or Thursday. That conversation costs you nothing and it's faster than waiting for someone to drive out.

What not to do: get on the roof, or cut anything that's under tension. A limb wedged under load stores a surprising amount of energy and it does not release gently. That's how people get badly hurt in the week after a storm.

What's actually an emergency

A limb resting on a structure or a vehicle. A tree that's come partway over and is being held up by another tree, which is the most dangerous situation in this whole trade. A trunk with a fresh crack through it. Anything blocking your only way out. Anything on a line, with the utility called first.

Urgent but not tonight: a cracked or broken limb hanging in the canopy that isn't over anything you care about. A tree that's newly leaning with soil lifting at the base. Large deadwood over a driveway you can park elsewhere. These need doing soon — days, not weeks — but paying emergency rates for them is money wasted.

Can wait for a scheduled visit: deadwood over a back fence, a limb over the shed, the branch that's been rubbing the gutter for two years. Get it on a list and I'll do it properly when I'm out there anyway.

Why dead limbs are worth dealing with before the storm

Deadwood is what comes down in high wind, and it comes down first. A tree full of dead limbs is a tree that will hurt something in the next storm, and the cost of taking them out on a calm Tuesday is a fraction of what it costs to deal with them after they've landed on something.

There's a tree-health argument too. A dead or rotting limb is an open route for decay into the trunk, and the tree spends resources trying to seal it off. Remove it cleanly at the right point and the tree closes the wound and puts that energy into the limbs that are actually alive.

If you're going to spend money on one thing before storm season, it's deadwood over the house. That's the highest-return tree work there is.