Tree Trimmers See Business Soar As Storm Nears
Aug 23, 2011
The following article was posted to the Jacksonville News 4 website on August 23, 2011:
Tree trimmers see business soar as storm nears
If hurricane-force winds come through northeast Florida, the last thing any homeowner wants is a tree coming down on his or her home.With that in mind, local tree-trimming services say they’re seeing a boom in business as Hurricane Irene continues to near the East Coast.
Rick Warming, of Warming Tree Services, Inc., said that a week before a hurricane is expected to strike, he sees the volume of customer calls double or triple.
“Now we’re busy, and it’s hard to get out to everyone who wants to have us come out,” Warming said. “We have seen homes completely demolished. Oaks weigh thousands of pounds.”Warming said trees most likely to fall over in a storm.
include water oaks, laurel oaks and Blackjack oaks. He said they all have shallow root systems that don’t hold up in a storm.Warming said there are other telltale signs to know whether a tree should be trimmed or cut down.
“A lot of times you’ll have what we call root rot or heart rot,” Warming said. “There will actually be a large section of the bottom of the tree with a large hole that you can see is rotten. You known at that point the root is damaged and not as strong structurally as it needs to be, and if it’s in proximity of the house, you know you need to have it removed or at least trimmed a little bit.”
On Tuesday afternoon, crews were at Iva Glover’s home on the Northside. A storm from Monday night knocked over three trees in his yard, and workers were also preparing his home for a possible storm.
“I’m going to be thinking about things we might be able to do to prevent damage from the coming storm,” Glover said.
Warming said homeowners need to pay close attention to hiring arborists who are licensed and have insurance. Work can range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars, depending on the service.
Channel 4’s Vickie Pierre also checked in with the city of Jacksonville to see what’s being done to trim trees around town. A spokesman said that the city has allocated $375,000 to cut down hundreds of old trees on city property, and workers expect to have 25 trees cut down by the end of the week.
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