Emergency Storm Damage Tree Removal in Bentonville, AR

Before you call anyone, including us

Treat every downed line as live. If a tree is on or near a power line, that's a call to the utility and to 911, not to a tree company. We can't legally or safely touch a tree in contact with a primary line until the utility has cleared it, and neither can anybody else who answers their phone at two in the morning.

Get everyone out of rooms under a damaged section of roof. Don't climb on anything, and don't try to pull a limb off a structure with a truck and a chain — that's how a partial failure becomes a total one, and how people get hurt.

Take photos from a safe distance if you can. Wide shots and close shots. Your adjuster will want them, and so will we.

What we do when we get there

First pass is stabilization. Get weight off the structure, take down anything hanging that could come loose, and open access so people can get in and out. That's usually enough to make the property safe and let a roofer tarp it.

Full cleanup follows — cutting up and hauling the trunk, chipping brush, and raking out the mess. Sometimes that's the same day, sometimes the next, depending on how many properties are in line behind a big storm.

We photograph the tree and the damage before we cut, and we'll write up what we found. Insurers ask for that, and having it from the crew that was on site tends to move a claim along.

What storms here actually do

Three patterns, and they behave differently.

Straight-line winds ahead of a spring line. These push over whole trees, roots and all, especially after heavy rain has softened thin soil over rock. What fails is the ground, not the wood. Big oaks that stood for decades come out flat with the root plate standing on edge.

Ice. Loads the fine branch tips first, so it breaks weak unions and end-heavy limbs. Bradford pears split at the crotch. Silver maples shed leaders. And ice damage keeps arriving for days — limbs let go long after the storm has passed and the sun is out.

Summer downbursts. Short, violent, very local. One street gets wrecked and the next street over doesn't know anything happened.

Hangers are the part people underestimate

After the obvious mess is cleared, there's often a broken limb still sitting up in the canopy, caught on the way down. Those are the injuries. They come loose with no warning, sometimes days later, and they're directly above where people walk.

If we're on your property for storm work, we'll look up and tell you what's still hanging. Getting it out now is far cheaper than getting it out of a car roof later.

Once the emergency is over

Storm calls often turn into planned work. A tree that survived this one with a torn union usually needs to be dealt with before the next, and we can schedule the work for a normal weekday at a normal price rather than an emergency one. Where a tree is sound but heavy, pruning the deadwood out first is often all it needs.

For anything that isn't urgent, you can also reach us through the form and we'll get back to you the same day during business hours.