Emergency storm damage cleanup is the call that comes at five in the morning, and it is the one part of tree trimming nobody plans for. A tree across the drive, a limb through the garage roof, a trunk resting on the car, or a branch left hanging over the front door with nothing holding it. Storm damage cleanup is answered outside working hours.
We answer emergency storm damage cleanup calls outside normal hours across Paris and the surrounding County of Brant. Ring (226) 546-3814.
Stay out from underneath it. That includes the part of the garden you cannot see properly in the dark. A tree that has already failed once is not stable.
If anything is touching a wire — a branch, a trunk, a fence the tree has fallen on — treat the whole area as live and keep everybody back. Ring the hydro utility before you ring anyone else. We do not cut trees off live conductors and no legitimate crew will.
Photograph it before anything is moved, from several angles. Your insurer will want that and it is much harder to reconstruct afterwards.
Then ring us and describe what is where. What is under the tree decides how fast we have to be there.
After a bad night the calls arrive faster than any crew can attend them, so they get worked in order of risk rather than order of arrival.
First for emergency storm damage cleanup are trees on or near live services, trees resting on an occupied part of a building, and anything blocking the only way out of a property.
Second are trees on outbuildings, fences and vehicles, and hangers over anywhere people walk.
Last are trees lying flat on open ground doing no further harm. That is still emergency storm damage cleanup, but it can wait a day, and it is better for everybody that it does.
Snow loading gets the blame and freezing rain does the damage. Snow sheds off a crown. Ice does not — it forms a shell around every twig and small branch, and a crown can end up carrying several times its own weight in ice by morning, quietly, with no wind involved at all.
That is why the worst nights around here are mild and wet rather than dramatic, and why the failures cluster on the wide-crowned trees and the multi-stemmed silver maples along the river flats. They have the most surface for ice to collect on and the weakest unions to hang it from.
Wind then finishes what the ice started, usually the following afternoon once the thaw has loosened the root plate.
Making it safe comes first and is often a separate stage from tidying it up. That can mean cutting a tree off a roof in sections, releasing a trunk that is under tension, or getting a hanger down so people can use their own garden again.
A tree that has fallen is usually under load — bent, sprung, or pinned. Cutting one in the wrong order releases that load all at once, and that is how people get hurt with chainsaws they own but rarely use.
Then the emergency storm damage cleanup proper: chipping the brush, cutting the trunk down, clearing the drive, and raking the site. If the tree came off a roof or a wall, we can leave the stump and the damaged section for your insurer to see, and take the rest.
Ring (226) 546-3814. Say where the tree is, what it is on, and whether anything is near a wire. If it is on a wire, ring the utility first. Our contact page has the details, and the home page covers the rest of what we do once the emergency is over.
Very few jobs stop at one of these. Here is everything else we do.
Tree trimming and pruning is most of what we do in Paris, and most tree trimming is not about making a tree smaller. It is about taking weight off the wrong places, getting the dead material out, and cutting so the tree can seal what we cut.
View Tree Trimming and Pruning
Dead branch removal is the tree trimming job people put off longest, and the one that gives least warning. A dead limb does not creak, lean or drop leaves to tell you it is going. It stays exactly where it is until the day it does not, which is why dead branch removal gets booked after the fact rather than before.
View Dead Branch Removal
Tree removal is the last option on the list, not the first, and we would rather talk you out of a tree removal than sell you one you did not need. But a dead, split, badly leaning or structurally finished tree beside a house is past what tree trimming can fix, and pretending otherwise costs more in the end.
View Tree Removal
Crown thinning and canopy reduction are the two kinds of tree trimming that make a large tree less of a liability without taking it out. Thinning takes density out of the crown; canopy reduction takes size off the outside of it. They solve different problems, they are constantly confused, and neither one is topping.
View Crown Thinning and Canopy Reduction
Tree cabling and bracing is how you keep a structurally suspect tree that is otherwise healthy and worth keeping, once tree trimming alone will not do it. A cable is a flexible support fitted high in the crown between two limbs or two stems; a brace is a rigid rod through a union that is already moving. Cabling and bracing limits movement, it does not repair the union.
View Tree Cabling and Bracing
Stump grinding and removal is the tree trimming job that turns a felled tree back into usable garden. A grinder takes the stump down below ground level in chips, so the area can be levelled, turfed, planted or paved. Stump grinding is quoted separately from taking the tree down.
View Stump Grinding and RemovalDescribe the tree and what is under it. Somebody attends, looks at the whole property, and returns a written scope with the debris and the exclusions spelled out.
The more you can tell us about the tree and the access, the more the first visit achieves. Only a way of reaching you is required. Would you sooner speak to someone? The number is (226) 546-3814.
