After the Storm: How to Clean Up Downed Trees Without Getting Hurt

More people get hurt cleaning up after a hurricane than during one. Not by wind. By chainsaws, ladders, falling limbs, and downed conductors that nobody noticed in a pile of brush. The storm is a natural disaster. The week after is an entirely preventable one.

Here is how to work through the aftermath without ending up in the ER at Halifax.

Before You Touch Anything

Assume every wire is live. A downed line lying in wet grass in Edgewater looks exactly like a dead one. It can energize a chain-link fence, a wet fence post, standing water, or the tree it fell into. Stay back at least 30 feet, keep kids and pets away, and call the utility. Never, ever cut a limb that is touching or near a conductor, and never try to lift a line off a tree with a "wooden" pole. Wet wood conducts. That job belongs to the power company, full stop.

Look up before you look down. Storm-damaged canopies are full of hangers: broken limbs partially detached and hung up in the branches above. They come down without warning, and they come down on the person standing under them. If there is anything overhead that is not attached the way it should be, that area is closed until a professional takes it down.

Check the ground. Cracked soil, a heaved root plate, a tree that is now leaning when it was not before. That tree is not stable. Do not work under it, do not park under it, and do not send your kid up to grab a branch off it.

The Ways Storm Cleanup Actually Hurts People

Storm-damaged wood is not normal wood. It is bent, twisted, loaded with stored energy, and under compression and tension in places you cannot see. Three mechanisms cause most of the serious injuries.

Spring poles. A young tree or limb bent over and pinned under debris is a loaded spring. When you cut it, it releases all that energy in a fraction of a second, straight back through where your head is. Spring poles have killed experienced sawyers. If you cannot immediately identify where the tension and compression are in a bent stem, walk away from it.

Compression and tension binds. Every limb under load has a side being squeezed and a side being pulled. Cut the compression side first and the kerf closes on your bar and you have a saw pinned in a limb you cannot control. Cut all the way through the tension side and the piece rips open and swings. Storm debris piles are stacked layers of these forces, and moving one piece changes the loading on everything under it.

Kickback and the barber chair. Touch the upper tip of a moving bar to anything and the saw comes back at your face faster than you can react. And on a leaning, tensioned trunk, a bad felling cut can cause the trunk to split vertically and rocket upward. That is a barber chair, and it is usually fatal to the person holding the saw.

If You're Going to Run a Saw

Small stuff on the ground, well away from wires, no tension, nothing overhead. That is the DIY envelope. Inside it:

• Wear it all. Helmet, eye protection, hearing protection, gloves, boots, and chainsaw chaps. Chaps stop a chain in a fraction of a second and they cost less than one stitch.
• Never work alone. Never work tired. Storm cleanup fatigue is when the mistakes happen, usually on day two or three.
• Keep both hands on the saw with your thumbs wrapped. Keep the bar tip out of the cut.
• Cut at or below waist height. If you are reaching above your shoulders with a running saw, you are already out of position.
• Nothing on a ladder. Ever. A chainsaw on a ladder is one of the most reliable ways to get badly hurt in the entire trade. Climbers use ropes and saddles for a reason.
• Plan an escape path before every cut and know where the piece is going to move when it lets go.
• If a saw gets pinned, stop. Shut it off, leave it, and free it with wedges or another saw. Do not yank on a running saw.

What Not to Do

Do not drag a limb off your roof. Half the time it is the only thing holding the rest of the tree in place, and pulling it lets the whole mass shift into your attic. Photograph it, tarp what you can safely reach from the ground, and let a crew take the weight off in a controlled sequence.

Do not cut into an uprooted root plate. When you sever the trunk off a partially uprooted tree, the plate can slam back into the hole with tremendous force, taking anyone standing in it with it.

Do not hire the truck that shows up unannounced. After every storm, Volusia County fills up with out-of-town operators. Some are competent. Many are not licensed, not insured, demand cash up front, and are gone before you find out they dropped a top through your neighbor's fence. Ask for proof of liability and workers' compensation insurance. If a crew is uninsured and someone gets hurt in your yard, the exposure lands on you.

What Comes After the Cleanup

Once the immediate hazards are handled, do not assume the standing trees are fine. Storms leave damage that takes months or years to show.

• Torn bark and broken stubs are wide-open doors for decay fungi. Broken limbs should be cleaned up with a proper cut back to a live lateral or to the branch collar, not left as jagged stubs.
• A tree that survived but has a partially lifted root plate has permanently lost anchorage. It may look fine and come out in the next moderate blow.
• Split unions and cracked stems are structural failures in progress. Some can be reduced and saved, some cannot.
• Salt-burned foliage on trees near the lagoon and in coastal Oak Hill and New Smyrna Beach usually recovers. Root damage does not.

Get an assessment while the damage is still fresh and documented, which also matters for insurance.

If you have a tree on your house, a hung-up limb over the driveway, or a pile of storm wood you do not want to be under, that is what we do. ArboristRX runs 24/7 emergency tree service across Edgewater, New Smyrna Beach, Port Orange, Oak Hill, and Volusia County, licensed and insured, with the rigging to take a tree apart in pieces instead of dropping it. Call (386) 444-5959 and stay out from under it.