What to Do Right After a Hurricane With Downed Trees

Stay away from every downed tree until you have checked for wires

Treat every downed tree and every hanging limb as if a live wire is tangled in it, and keep yourself, your family and your pets well clear until you have looked for wires from a safe distance. That is the first thing to do, before you photograph anything, before you move anything, and before you call anyone.

Storm debris hides conductors. A limb resting on a service drop can carry current through wet bark and standing water, and a wire that looks slack and dead may still be energised. Look up as well as down: the line feeding your house may be lying in a shrub twenty feet from the trunk you are worried about. If you see a wire down, on a tree, or sagging low, stay back and report it to your utility. Do not try to move the tree to free the line.

Once you have confirmed no wires are involved, you can start assessing the rest. Work from the outside in: look at the whole tree from a distance before you walk under it. A trunk that has shifted at the root plate, a canopy that is suddenly lower than it was, or soil heaved up in a ring around the base all mean the tree is unstable and the area under it is not safe to stand in.

Sort the damage into three piles before you touch a saw

Split what you are looking at into three categories, because each one calls for a different response: limbs already on the ground that are clear of wires and structures, trees or limbs resting on a roof, fence, vehicle or another tree, and trees still standing but damaged. The first category is the only one most homeowners should handle personally, and only with hand tools and both feet on the ground.

Ground limbs that are fully detached, clear of any wire, and not under tension are safe to cut up and drag to the curb, following whatever debris rules your county has issued after the storm. Keep the work small: a bowsaw or a small chainsaw on material under your control, no climbing, no ladders, no working alone with a running saw.

Anything in the second and third categories is a different job. A limb on a roof may be holding a broken rafter in place, and cutting it can drop the load onto the structure or shift it onto whoever is below. A tree leaning against another tree is storing energy in the trunk, and releasing it is the single most dangerous moment in storm cleanup. Those are the calls to make from the ground, with a phone, not with a saw.

What makes a storm-damaged tree harder to take down

Storm damage changes the physics of tree work, and that is why a job that looks like a simple removal on a calm day can take a crew most of a day after a hurricane. The trunk may be split, the root plate may be lifted, and the canopy may be interlocked with a neighbouring tree. Each of those removes the normal cues about which way the wood wants to go.

The same logic applies to the trees that are still standing. A tree that lost half its canopy has changed its wind loading, and a tree with a cracked crotch may hold together for months and then fail in the next ordinary thunderstorm. A post-storm walkaround with binoculars from the ground is a reasonable way to spot the obvious ones.

Document the damage before the debris disappears

Photograph and video everything before cleanup starts: the tree in place, the part of the house or fence it hit, the licence plate of any vehicle involved, and a wide shot showing where the tree stood relative to the property line. Insurers handle storm claims on evidence, and the tree is the evidence. Once it is bucked into firewood and stacked at the curb, the only record of how it fell is what you shot on your phone.

Note whose tree it was, too. A tree that stood on a neighbour's lot and landed on your roof is a different conversation from one rooted on your side of the line, and a photo of the stump or root plate settles the question faster than memory does. Check your policy for what it says about tree removal and debris hauling, since coverage for taking a tree off a structure and coverage for hauling away the wood are not always the same thing.

Keep receipts for anything you pay out during cleanup. If a claim is opened, the paper trail matters more than the total.

Call for the trees that are on something, leaning, or too big to handle

Call for help when the tree is touching a structure, resting on a wire, hung up in another tree, leaning with a lifted root plate, or simply larger than you can safely work from the ground. Those five conditions cover almost every case where a homeowner should stop and put the saw down.

When you call, describe the situation from the ground: what the tree is on, whether any wire is visible, whether the trunk is cracked or the base is heaved, and how far it is from the house. That description tells us what equipment and how many people the job needs before anyone leaves the yard. Be ready to say whether the tree is on your property or a neighbour's, and whether the utility has already been out.

Expect the work to be sequenced rather than done all at once. A tree on a roof usually means the load comes off in pieces, smallest and outermost first, with the wood lowered rather than dropped so nothing lands on the damaged structure. A hung-up tree means rigging. A leaning trunk near a fence means a controlled direction of fall. None of that is a reason to rush a decision on the spot; ask how the crew plans to bring the tree down and what happens to the wood afterwards.

What drives the cost of storm tree removal

The price of removing a storm-damaged tree depends on access, the load the tree is under, and what it is resting on, and the only accurate number comes from an on-site look at the tree. No honest figure can be given over the phone for a trunk that is split and leaning over a garage.

Things that raise the price: the tree is on or through a structure, it is hung up in another tree, it is near a service drop, the trunk is split or the root plate is lifted, the only access is over a fence or across a lawn that equipment would damage, or the wood has to be lowered rather than dropped. Things that lower it: the tree is already on open ground, well clear of wires and buildings, with a driveway or street close enough to work from, and the debris can be left at the curb under the county's storm pickup.

Ask for the quote in writing and ask what it covers: taking the tree down, hauling the wood, stump grinding, and any rigging or crane work. Ask whether the price changes if the tree turns out to be more compromised than it looked from the driveway. Then compare quotes on the same scope, not on the headline number.

If you are in Tallahassee and a storm has left a tree on something or leaning over something, call us at (850) 555-0142 and describe what you are looking at from a safe distance.

The first hour, in order

Keep people and pets out of the drop zone, check for wires, photograph the damage, then decide whether the tree is a ground-limb job or a call. That order handles nearly every post-storm tree situation on a residential lot.