Storm damage tree service in Sarasota
Worked in order of what can still hurt someone. Anything touching a power line is the utility’s call.
Is this you?
What storm damage looks like
A limb hung up in the tree
A “hanger” looks settled until it isn’t. Keep everyone out from under it.
A tree that’s leaning now
Heaved soil or lifted roots on the far side mean it moved in the ground.
A split at the fork
A crack running down from a union, sometimes the whole trunk.
How we see it
After the wind, work in order of what can still hurt somebody.
The dramatic damage and the dangerous damage are usually different trees. A trunk lying flat across an empty lawn is finished moving. A broken limb caught forty feet up in the canopy is not.
- A trunk under tension is read before any cut: that’s the one that catches people out.
- Hangers are roped out from above, never pulled down from the ground.
- No topping the survivors “so it doesn’t happen again”. It makes it more likely.
Before anyone arrives
Three things to do now
- Keep everyone out from under it. A broken limb hung up in the canopy looks stable until it isn’t.
- Stay away from any line it touches and call the utility. That one is their job, not ours.
- Photograph what hit what before anything is moved, if there’s any chance of an insurance claim.
How we do it
How we work a storm call
Sort by danger
People first, then roofs and cars, then access, then everything else.
Read the wood
Tension and compression checked before a saw goes in. Spring poles released deliberately.
Rope, don’t pull
Anything hung up is tied off above and lowered under control.
Look at the rest
The trees left standing get a look at their root plates and unions before we go.
What it costs
What storm work costs
The same way as any other job: tree by tree, in writing. After a big storm we tell you honestly how soon we can get there.
What it’s resting on
A limb on a roof or a car is slower and more careful than one on the lawn.
Tension in the wood
Loaded trunks take more rigging and more time to cut safely.
Clean-up and haul
Chipped and hauled, cut to rounds for the curb, or left for you: your choice.
The details
For the people who want every step
The order we work in
Storm weeks run on triage, not on a booking list, and it is worth saying so plainly because it means somebody always waits. Roughly:
- Anything on or near a conductor — not ours. That is the utility, and nobody should be under it or near it, including us.
- Hangers over occupied space. A broken limb lodged in the canopy over a bedroom, a walk or a driveway. This is the classic one that kills people, because it looks settled and it is not.
- Trunks and limbs under tension, resting on a structure or holding a load.
- Trees that have moved at the root plate, which may be standing and may be about to not be.
- Everything else, including the impressive-looking whole tree lying safely on the grass.
Hangers
A hanger is a limb that has failed but not fallen. It is held by a fork, by a strip of bark, or by the limb it landed on, and every one of those is temporary. It comes out by climbing above it and roping it out, which means the climber approaches from a position it cannot reach if it releases, and nobody stands under it while that happens.
Do not throw a rope over it from the ground and pull. That is how a fifty-pound piece arrives at head height on a trajectory nobody predicted.
Tension, and the spring pole
Storm wood is loaded wood. A bent sapling pinned under a fallen limb is a spring pole holding real energy, and cutting it in the wrong place releases all of it at once, upward, at the person holding the saw. A trunk resting on a fence is in compression on one face and tension on the other, and which is which determines the order of the cuts and whether the bar gets pinched or the log rolls.
This is the single biggest reason to leave storm cleanup to somebody who does it for a living. The chainsaw injuries after a hurricane are overwhelmingly homeowners, on the ground, on day two.
Leaning trees, and the root plate
A lean is not by itself a defect. Trees lean toward light, away from other trees, and out over water, and they build reaction wood into the lean over decades to carry it. A tree that has leaned since before you bought the house is not new information.
A tree that leaned last night is. What matters is whether the roots moved, and you assess that at the ground, not at the crown. Look on the side away from the direction of lean for soil cracked in an arc, turf lifted like a hinged mat, roots visible where they were buried, or a gap opening between the trunk and the soil on the leaning side. Any of those means the root plate has lifted and the tree is holding by less than it was.
Saturated soil is the other half. A week of rain into sand takes a great deal of holding capacity out of a root plate, which is why trees go over in storms that were not, by wind speed alone, remarkable.
Split unions
Where two codominant stems have pulled apart at the union, the crack often runs further down the trunk than the visible split. Sometimes one stem can be removed and the tree kept. Sometimes the trunk is compromised and it cannot. That is a look-at-it decision, and anyone pricing it from a photograph is guessing. Related: cabling and bracing.
On storm chasers
After a named storm, out-of-state trucks appear, knock on doors, ask for cash up front, and are gone before the trees they topped start pushing shoots. The tells are consistent: no local address, pressure to decide now, a discount for paying today, an insurance claim they offer to handle, and a recommendation to cut every tree on the property back hard “so this doesn’t happen again.”
Ask for a local address and a certificate of insurance sent to you by the insurer. That request ends most of these conversations by itself.
Insurance
Broadly, and this is not advice: policies here tend to cover removing a tree that has hit an insured structure, and tend not to cover removing one that fell in the yard. What helps a claim is documentation before anything is cut — the position of the tree, what it struck, and the date. Photographs you take yourself are worth more than anything a contractor tells you about your own policy.
How it’s specified on the scope
| Response order | By danger, not by call order. You will be told if you are behind something more urgent. |
|---|---|
| Power lines | Utility work. We do not approach primary conductors and are not line-clearance qualified. |
| Hangers | Roped out from above. Never pulled from the ground. |
| Loaded wood | Assessed for tension and compression before any cut. Spring poles released deliberately. |
| Leaning trees | Assessed at the root plate first — heaved soil, lifted turf, exposed roots on the off side. |
| Before we cut | Photograph what hit what, if there is any chance of an insurance claim. |
| What we will not do | Recommend topping the surviving trees so it “doesn’t happen again.” |
Questions
What people ask us about this
How soon can you come after a hurricane?
Slower than you’d like, and in order of danger. A limb over an occupied bedroom goes ahead of a tree flat in an empty yard. If you’re behind something more urgent, you’ll be told that rather than given a time that quietly passes.
A tree is on the power line. What do I do?
Stay away from it and call the utility. We don’t approach lines that carry power and we aren’t line-clearance crews. Once the utility has made it safe, we can deal with the rest of the tree.
Does my tree have to come down because it’s leaning?
Not automatically. What matters is whether the root plate moved. A tree that has leaned for twenty years is different from one that leaned last night.
Will insurance cover it?
That depends on your policy and what the tree hit. Photograph the damage before anything is moved, and we’ll write the work up clearly so your insurer can see what was done.
Want somebody to look at it properly?
Tell us what the tree is doing. The owner calls you back to set a time to walk it, and nothing is priced before somebody has stood under it.
Other work