ice storm

[treeboy6]

I am wondering if any of you arborists have some good advice. We ave been dealing with the aftrmaths of a large ice storm in Central Kentucky for about a month. Most of the serious ???? has been dealt with - limbs off houses, garages, golf courses, you name it. I want to know how trees respond to this kind of catacysm. In some cases we are taking one third of the crown just to get hangers and broken branches. I have before and after picutres of all of our projects if it helps you to give advice.

 

[che]

I can't give you advice, but I can certainly give you my hearfelt sympathy. I went to Lexington for the first time since the storm just yesterday. It was good that there wasn't traffic on New Circle or I would have caused an accident....I felt like I'd been hit in the gut...it literally took my breath away. I've never seen that much damage on that many trees before. Nothing of any size was spared. Looked like every species was involved...as if someone with a 'flying dull bushhog' was flying over the city.

(I remember the same 'feeling' when I went down to Wolfcreek Dam and saw the Pine Beetle devastation.)

Good luck, Che

 

[Jumper]

We had the "ice storm of the century" here in eastern Ontario and southern Quebec in January 1998. Five plus years after the fact you can still see the evidence. If the owner decided to keep an obviously gravely injured tree, there was not much than could be done except remove all the broken branches, which left many trees looking like crap, all the centers gone etc. as you describe. Birches bent right over, and never restraightened, the small oaks outside my office fared a lot better, evergreens were the least affected. Maples were devastated and greatly affected the maple syrup output and still is lower; some bushes lost 60% of their trees entirely, and the remainder were damaged. Not much you can do except make the tree safe, (hopefully) encourage regeneration of the removed areas, and many of the cuts would be made in locations no arborist would dream of cutting but for the damage to the tree. At this point many are being removed because they did not come back as the owner expected, or are decaying or dying off despite professionial attention. Many have also been cabled in an attempt to hold them together. I describe some of the trees east of Montreal along Autoroute 10 as looking like clipped poodles, no branches or leaves left at all except for huge dense tufts of growth as the tree attempts to compensate for its lost crown. I am not an arborist but am just reporting what I have witnessed firsthand as resident and later a groundguy.

 

[Climbing mike]

We have had 2 major ice storms this winter. All of the trees were affected. I have been pruning only the broken parts back to the nearest limb below the break, leaving all the rest of the tree alone I figure it has had enough shock already. Most of the tree end up looking very lopsided and uneven. I have noticed another problem that comes with major storms, Out of town companies that are storm chasing. I have heard them in stores and places talking how much money they are making. Most of them are just draging to the curb for the city to pick up, they dont know where to get rid of most of the wood. Nearly eveyone in the city has or will need tree work done for the storm, with all the out of towners here working I bet this summer the will be no tree work left to do. How can a company come half way across the U.S. and do tree work? Ive counted 9 states that has people here doing tree work, I did a job and was still on the same block when a company for nebraska was knocking on the door wanting to grind my stumps. the price they quoted was 3.5 times higher than the company that grinds my stumps. My advice to all the companies that are storm chasers, if you take care of your customers at home than you want need to drive acroos country to make a buck. Get a life and stay home.

Mike