Back in the 1970s when I lived in NY a few miles from Canada, the country was loaded with dead elms killed off by the blight. It was the poor man's firewood, and I burned way more than I would have liked. Makes great cookstove wood, but a lot of it was punky, very much a second-choice fuel. We thought that was the end of the elms.
Today, plenty of elms in that country. Many of them still succumb to the blight, but many also grow sizable and healthy. Tallest timber in the woods--with a good eye, from a distance you can pick out the elm branches over-topping the canopy.