Commercial Storm Tree Cleanup

Assessing the trees that did not fail

Cleanup gets the attention after a storm. The more valuable work is looking at the trees that stayed up.

A wind event that brings one tree down has loaded every other tree on the property. Some will have partial failures that are not visible from the ground: cracked unions, root plate movement, and limbs that have shifted without coming down.

Those are the failures that arrive a fortnight later on a still day, which is when people are underneath them.

A post storm walk of the tree population, looking specifically for new cracks, new leans, and lifted soil at the root plate, is a few hours and catches the second wave.

The failures that hurt people usually arrive a fortnight after the storm, on a still day.

Handling the volume

Storm debris arrives in a volume that normal maintenance cannot absorb, and the disposal is usually the larger part of the cost.

Chipping on site reduces haul volume dramatically and produces material that can be used as mulch in perimeter beds. It needs space to work and it is noisy, so it is not always possible on a tight site during business hours.

Where material has to be hauled, disposal is charged by weight or volume and green waste facilities have their own limits after a widespread event. That is why response times stretch after a regional storm: the constraint is often the tip rather than the crew.

Diseased material is the exception. Where a failure was caused by decay or disease, that wood should leave the site rather than being chipped and spread across it.

The insurance and liability question

After a failure that causes damage, two questions follow. What did it cost, and could it have been foreseen.

The first is answered by documentation of the damage, which is why photographs before cleanup matter so much. Once the debris is gone, the evidence is gone.

The second is answered by the tree records, or by their absence. A property that assessed its trees annually, documented the findings, and acted on the recommendations is in a very different position from one that did not, even if the same tree failed in both cases.

This is the practical reason tree assessment records are worth keeping properly. They are rarely needed and they are decisive when they are.