When a tree falls: Who cleans up neighborhood?

According to Corkey Baca, a co-owner of Baca’s Trees in Albuquerque, it is not uncommon for him and other tree companies to be busy providing emergency tree care or removing literally hundreds of fallen trees and branches throughout the metro area after a significant wind storm.

A person’s own homeowner’s insurance will likely pay for damage caused by a falling limb, but if that damage extends to a neighbor’s home, the neighbor may have to fend for himself.

	Harvest wood Spring winds that damage or topple trees may render the tree unaesthetic and unsuitable for shade, but homeowners can still harvest the firewood with some preparation and labor. First, cut the wood into log sizes that will fit into your fireplace or wood-burning stove. It’s best to split the wood to further make the pieces more manageable and to expose more surfaces to the air, says University of New Mexico arboriculture supervisor Bryan Suhr. The wood should then be stacked in a sunny location away from the home, because woodpiles can attract mice, insects and other pests. For wood to burn clean and hot, he says, it needs to be dried, or “seasoned,” a process that can take six months to a year (harder woods like oak take longer than softer woods like pine). The pile should then be covered with a thick, clear plastic tarp. This will protect the wood from reabsorbing moisture from rain and snow, Suhr says. In addition, the greenhouse effect created beneath the tarp heats the woodpile, helping to dry it faster and kill most insects that may be present.

Whether the fallen tree is recycled depends on who is called to clean up the mess.

Deciduous trees regrow their foliage during the spring, which adds to a tree’s structural weight and resistance in the face of wind, Baca says. Strong and sustained gusts can snap off branches and in some cases cause a tree to topple in whole or part.

Should that happen, the first thing to do is check for damage that falling branches may have caused to your home or property. While it may not seem neighborly, your neighbor will have to file a claim with his or her own insurance company for any damage caused by your tree during a wind storm, says John Bradley Martin of the J.B. Martin Agency, an independent insurance agency.

It is considered a “natural occurrence,” sometimes referred to as an act of god, Martin explains. In this situation, the general position taken by insurance companies on behalf of their clients is, “it was my tree, but not my wind.”

If the falling branch or tree damages a vehicle, it is generally not covered under a homeowner’s policy. Rather, it is covered by their car insurance, and only then if the policy holder has comprehensive insurance, Martin says. Likewise, if your tree falls on your neighbor’s car during a wind storm, your neighbor’s own comprehensive car insurance will have to redress the issue.

Where your neighbor may have a liability claim against the offending tree owner is if it can be shown that the tree was diseased or damaged prior to the wind storm, and that the homeowner knew about it, or should have known about it, and did nothing to remedy the situation, Martin says.

That’s why it’s important to assess a tree’s health before wind damage occurs to either the tree or property beneath it, says Bryan Suhr, a supervisor of arboriculture at the University of New Mexico.

Tree damage is not always easy to see because it can happen gradually and over a long period of time, he says. Suhr recommends that homeowners “routinely take pictures of their trees from the same vantage point and the same time of year so you have a benchmark, a point of reference to see physical changes.”

He points to a series of “red flag” warning signs developed by the International Society of Arboriculture to alert people that a tree may be in danger. Among the tell-tale signs are:

Dead or detached branches, or branches that have fallen to the ground; cavities or rotten wood in the trunk or major branches; the presence of mushrooms at the base of the tree; cracks or splits in the trunk or where branches are attached at the collar; trunk leaning; leaves that have taken on an unusual color, or have become disfigured; roots that have been damaged by lowering of the soil level, installation or repair of pavement, or digging of trenches; or trees that have been “topped.”

After you call your insurance company, your next call should be with professionals who know how to remove the downed lumber.

If a tree on private property falls onto a street, the city will remove that portion on public right of way, says Mark Motsko, public information officer with the city’s Department of Municipal Development.

Although the sidewalk is technically the responsibility of the adjacent property owner, the city will remove trees and branches from there as well “because it’s a public safety issue,” he says.

Reports of downed trees and branches should be reported to the city’s 311 phone information system. City crews generally respond in 48 hours or less, Motsko says.

Unfortunately, that wood often winds up in the landfill.

The street maintenance crews drive what’s called a “trouble shooter truck,” which also contains miscellaneous items, like tires, gravel, garbage and construction debris that crews pick up from public streets and other city rights of way.

When crews respond to a call about downed branches and trees, “we will cut it up into manageable pieces, depending on the size of the truck and the size of the city worker and haul it away to the landfill,” Motsko says. “Separating the wood from the other waste on the truck would not be cost effective or the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

Before the wood from the public right of way is placed on the truck, the property owner can request that it be placed back on his property. “We will leave it in manageable sizes but we won’t be cutting it into fireplace logs or splitting it, and we won’t be doing any stacking. We want to keep the wood out of the landfill whenever we can, but it’s not always possible.”

There is far more leeway if a private tree cutting and removal service is called by the property owner.

Baca’s Trees, for example, will upon request cut the wood and stack it for the property owner at no extra fee, though they do charge $90 an hour for splitting wood. For people who don’t want the wood, “we cut it up and leave it out at the street and consult a list we have of people who are willing to pick it up and haul it away for free and for their own use,” Baca says. “If it’s a small amount of wood that will fit in a pickup truck we can haul it away to our facility or put it through our chipper truck and then give the chips away for free. Sometimes we compost it for soil amendments.”

Baca’s Trees sells its compost for $20 a cubic yard. “We try to recycle everything we collect from the field,” he says.

Unlike the city, using a private tree service company to cut up a dead or downed tree from private property comes with a cost. Removing a small tree, say 15-20 feet tall, could cost $250 or more, while a large tree of 50 feet or taller and significantly wider girth, might tap the wallet for something in excess of $2,000, Baca says. In addition to size of the tree, price is determined by how easy it is to access the tree with specialized equipment, if the tree is partially standing, if a grinder is to be used to remove the stump, and how much manpower is required.

Because this is back-breaking and dangerous work, Suhr suggests that homeowners use only companies that can produce a certificate of insurance and that have been in business for a long time and have established good reputations.