Storm damage puts tree service companies to work
Cleanup continues from last weekend's nor'easter
Last weekend's snowstorm was a perfect recipe for disaster: trees in full canopies, several inches of wet snow, and stiff wind to boot.
No surprise, the snow load from the record-breaking nor'easter caused tree branches to snap throughout the Northeast with central and northern Chester County getting its share of the carnage.
While it may have been a headache for property owners, it was money in the bank for some businesses.
The Tree Doctors in Parkesburg had all its crews out all week, said owner Mike Martorana.
"The trees have taken a beating," Martorana said on Wednesday. "We've been on storm calls since last Saturday."
Though Martorana's crews are being called out to cut up busted branches, that is just part of the problem.
"The concern is not the branch on the ground but where it came from," Martorana said.
Homeowners don't realize that, the end of the broken branch left on the tree has to be pruned and the wound prepared properly. Otherwise, a tree will react and seal off the part of the tree with the wound, he said.
Further, depending on how big the branch was, the whole tree could now be off balance which would create a hazard, Martorana said.
Martorana said he expects his crews to be busy for the next couple of weeks.
Hardest hit were the maples because they have big leaves that held a lot of snow.
Scott Hunter, owner of Scott's Tree Service of El
verson, said he's noticed that stump maple and silver maple, in particular, were hard hit.
Those types of maples are not as strong as the sugar maple and with the snow load on the leaves, branches broke, Hunter said.
Like the Tree Doctors, Scott's had all its crews on the road all last week.
No doubt they passed Delchester Tree Service trucks along the way.
Delchester crews spent the first part of the week on emergency calls clearing branches off driveways and rooftops, places where power and cable crews needed to work in order to restore utilities to the property, said Frank Huber, in the business since 1979.
The end of the week was devoted to general cleanup, Huber said on Friday.
Looking at his workload, Huber said his crews were spending their time in the Malvern, Paoli and West Chester areas.
"The farther north towards Pottstown, the worse it got," Huber said. "Any more wet snow (in central Chester County) and it would have been a disaster."
In addition to fixing damaged maples, Huber said he had to take down a 160-year-old white oak.
"The homeowner called me at 1 p.m. Saturday," Huber said. "I was there in a half hour and it split right in front of us. It just missed the police car."
Police were on-site to close the road, he explained.
Huber said he brought in a crane on Monday and took down the tree.
Crews from Delchester, based in East Goshen, were working all day, every day, last week up until dusk.
"We're going full-tilt," Huber said.
Leon Ressler, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Lancaster County Agriculture Extension Service, agreed that maple trees saw the most damage. Meanwhile, the region's fruit trees were spared.
Ressler said fruit trees are smaller; many are grown on a trellis, so they are support by wires.
"The old days of the 60-foot cherry tree where you used a ladder to harvest the fruit are gone," Ressler said.
These days most orchard fruit trees are dwarf to reduce labor at harvest time, the extension agent said.
This time of year the big question is; how did the fir and spruce trees make out? Will Santa be putting gifts under a pretty tree?
"Everything's perfect," said Bob Wiggins of Wiggins Auto Tags who runs a Christmas trees farm in Thornbury. The snow had "no real effect."
Actually, overall it was a pretty good season, everything looks good, it's a nice crop, said Wiggins, who has built a station at his Christmas tree farm and it is now a stop on the West Chester Railroad's Christmas Tree Train. This year the tree train makes its run Dec. 4 and 11 at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Denver Tree service company AAA is available 24/7 for all your tree service needs.
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