DRT "In the Zone"
Some of you guys may not want all the details so here is the short version…there is a tremendous amount of tree work to be done in this area…Picayune and Slidell, MS. I spent the last 2 days at 30 to 60 feet up most of the day…you can see a lot from that vantage point. Incredible destruction…lots of downed trees in yards, on houses, in pools, from one lot into a neighbor’s lot, MANY widow makers, just hanging in the trees, waiting to fall.
I am sure folks need a lot of help now and will be for months, maybe years. Lots of trees are broken off about 15-30 feet above ground, like a bomb hit them. Pines seem to have suffered most.
Team One of our Disaster Relief Team is on site in Picayune, MS. We packed our gear Thursday night, got about 3 hrs sleep and left Fri. AM for MS. Enroute we came across what appeared to be a collision on an exit ramp in Meridian…two cars nose to nose. Ends up one was manned by a 94 yr old man going to visit his wife in a nursing home. He was confused and came down the exit ramp, was almost headed north in the southbound lane. The car that was blocking him (at first I thought this guy was a hero) took off when we were coming towards the Cadillac the elderly man was driving…we don’t know why he took off but he vamoosed…as soon as he moved his car the Caddie shot across both lanes of I-20 traffic, at about 2 mph, no hurry, and narrowly missed getting hit by 2 tractor trailers.
Long story short, one of our guys drove Elmer’s car for him to the nursing home, we escorted him in, and while he visited his wife we spoke to the administration so they could get him some help…they were calling his family to help him get home.
After this one hour detour we finally got to our host’s home in Picayune. We set up camp Friday night and got started Sat. AM early. We drove down to Slidell with Derwin, our host, to his father-in-law’s home. Perry had a very large pine on his house. Some of us assessed it for awhile as the others began ground cleanup so we would have a clear working area.
Saturday we cleared out the top which hung out almost horizontal past the roof line about 30 feet. Once limbs were clear, we rigged a central tree to be our belay spar for the rest of the trunk. I chained a pulley lock to handle the line from the Warn Winch we are using to lift trunk pieces and swing them clear of the house.
Today, Sunday, we finished all the trunk pieces. All had the Warn Winch main support and at least one or two tag lines...these were used to arrest the swing as the trunk piece swung the 25-30 feet towards the main belay tree, sometimes with a dynamic belay around trees…a PortaWrap would have been nice.
I dropped the rigging gear from the main belay tree about dusk. Since it is so hot in the day, I went ahead and started up the next belay tree…set the winch pulley about 60 feet up and ran the line to the top of the spar that is still on the house. We plan to use the winch to lift the trunk off the roof and use Derwin’s tractor to pull a chain thru a big block about 30 feet up. As we lift the tree, the tractor will pull sideways to swing to tree off the house and then we can lower it with the winch.
The tree is still attached, kind of, to the root ball…it cracked /broke severely at the base so the root ball will not be too much of a factor…no chance of it helping the tree stand back up…too bad for us.
My ropes and split tails must be real sappy…I just about cannot make them work. I remember reading a thread about how to fix that…need to go find it, Eaqpt. is becoming unusable.
I’ll post pictures as I can edit and downsize them.