Severe winds in PNW region alter urban forest!

[scott_baker]

As many of you may know we had a very strong windstorm on Thursday night/Friday morning. A torrential rain on Thursday evening set us up for a terrible event for tree failure.

We have seen every type of failure including big trees with good roots. Incredible amount of damage.

Everyone is buried and working long hours on dangerous removals. Power is still off for ~200,000 homes in region.

Stay safe everyone.

PNW ITFD reporters: please try to rrecord some failures!

Scott

 

[tom_otto]

What an amazing storm!!! I just got power restored 20 min ago. Here's what Angle Lake park in Seatac looked like on Fri morn. 16 Doug. firs down and two leaners.

 

[tom_otto]

Some were in bad shape.

 

[tom_otto]

Check out the cracks in the soil. This and another I cut before we started the clean up.

 

[tom_otto]

Last one. This house is on the other side of the lake.
Anyone else have some photos to share?

 

[jimmyq]

watch out tonight, another one blowing in, not as strong as the last but enough to do more damage. Work safe folks!

 

[Jamin_Mayer]

Dang! I know of a tree service out here (in Colorado) on the way out there to work.

Does Oregon or Washington require state licenses for tree work?

For those who are planning on going there. Watch out for those root balls!

You don't want to be squashed by one.

For those of you who are working out there now; be safe!

 

[RyanCafferky]

I've been working every day since the storm. Been so busy that I haven't taken any pictures. Some very impressive failures and still tons of clean up left to do. This storm hit right when we were getting ready to shut down for a few weeks for the holiday and to do maintenance.

Today was a nasty day. 100 foot douglas fir 36" DBH laid across three tin sheds in a backyard. Lots of junk everywhere that was (valuable) to the customer. Oh and it was 33 degrees and raining. No crane access and when I got close to the butt the log stood up and I had to climb it and chunk it down.

I think all of us around here will be taking down quite a few douglas firs that have heaved and then sat back down into their holes. Makes for some exciting rigging anyway.

 

[Roger_Barnett]

There's 5 guys that are already here. They worked with STP for a couple days. Tomorrow and Friday, their two best climbers, Matt and Aaron, are working with me. We have three trees on houses that can be done with our "cranes"---ie, their two GRCS's and my Hobbs. My half of my GRCS is out with its other owner....

Did some big stuff with a 100 ton DMAG today. Took a 12000 lb fir log from 70 feet away off a house, after taking the top 4500 lb log. The broken top of the tree and branches may have weighed another 5000-8000 lb....making its total weight less than my 30000 guess. It just missed killing a lady in her bed.... dang, I meant to get pics of the bedroom....

did get pics of the 110 footer, 30 inch dbh, that we picked off whole....

 

[Fred_Berkelhammer]

Tell Matt and Aaron I guess this means the Christmas party in Boulder is off! Good luck, Roger; I'm glad Colorado's typical storm damage tree is half as tall.

 

[cmw]

Here's some of what we've worked on. This spruce took out a mess of wires and a plum across the street. The roots were pretty well rotted

 

[cmw]

heres a close up of the roots

 

[cmw]

heres a black locust that blew apart, taking out Kathy's fence!

 

[cmw]

here is the base of the locust

 

[cmw]

one more

another spruce on a house

 

[Roger_Barnett]

[ QUOTE ]
Dang! I know of a tree service out here (in Colorado) on the way out there to work.

Does Oregon or Washington require state licenses for tree work?

For those who are planning on going there. Watch out for those root balls!

You don't want to be squashed by one.

For those of you who are working out there now; be safe!

[/ QUOTE ]Would that be Ambush? Here's Dan, taking a hemlock off a roof. We have a line set in a cedar, and tensioned with the GRCS.

I'm putting lots of storm pics up on the flickr site below, so it will be changing.

 

[Mark Chisholm]

Kathy's place was hit too, huh? Those storms have no mercy. Nice hat Kathy!

 

[Oxman]

NY Times article

Storm damage backlash is when fearful property owners have trees removed that are just fine.

 

[Oxman]

Seattle Times Op Ed article by Olaf Ribeiro

This is another article on storm backlash. Olaf has a great lab that analyzes samples for decay & disease monitoring. Thanks for putting in your two cents worth, Olaf.