Tree companies bombarded with calls
Hundreds of telephone calls had been made to pruning companies by Wednesday morning asking for help with trees affected by the wind storm.
The calls had started coming in to A Cut Above Tree Services about 9 p.m. Tuesday night, said owner Mike Muminovic. By Wednesday morning there were already about 45 calls.
Most downed trees were coniferous — blue spruce in particular.
“If you look at the coniferous trees they don’t tap root. They’re pretty much all surface roots,” said Garth Helle, owner of Poplar Mechanics.
The coniferous trees are also thickly coated in foliage.
“They’re just like a sail — when the wind hits them strong enough, over they go,” said Helle, noting poplar trees, which often lose large branches in summer storms, suffered little damage. Most poplars have lost their leaves and were not as vulnerable.
“The wind just whistled right through them,” said Helle.
Muminovic speculates there may have been so many trees down in Crescent Heights because there is quite a bit of sandy soil there.
With so many calls coming in for service, it was necessary to prioritize calls based on those that needed immediate attention, versus ones not critically urgent. In some cases part of a tree would have to be removed from a roof or to provide access, and then crews would return at a later date to complete the job, said Helle.
One of the challenges is going to be addressing the holes left in the ground after spruce trees were ripped out of the soil, roots and all, said Helle. It will probably mean filling the hole after the tree is removed and then packing the ground and even reseeding the grass.
There appeared to be a concentration of calls from the northeast and the northwest, said Kara Keebler, in charge of determining priority calls for A1 Tree Cutting Services Ltd.
A third of the calls were about trees actually laying on houses and vehicles, said Keebler. Many were also coming in from people feeling anxious about the “likelihood” of a tree on their property coming down.
“It (the wind storm) puts the fear into people” said Keebler.