Falling trees and limbs cause hundred of millions of dollars of damage each year, as well as personal injuries and deaths. Windstorms and ice storms are leading causes of such damage and injuries.
Tree-related damage is usually apparent. It is easy to see limbs on roofs, vehicles or power lines. Sometimes the damage is so severe that an entire building is destroyed. This is especially likely to happen when large trees are torn out of the ground and topple onto a house, crashing through the structure or knocking it off its foundation.
But don't forget about underground damage which isn't so obvious. In 1992 in Miami-Dade County, Florida, trees were uprooted by Hurricane Andrew ... hundreds of millions of dollars of damage was done to underground utilities such as sewer and water lines, buried communications cables and sidewalks.
Some potential problems are easy to spot. They include:
- cracks in the trunk or major limbs
- hollow and decayed trees
- trees that look one-sided or lean significantly
- branches hanging over the house near the roof
- limbs in contact with power lines
- mushrooms growing from the bark, indicating a decayed or weakened stem
- V-shaped forks rather than U-shaped ones. V-shaped are more likely to split
- crossing branches that rub or interfere with one another.
*Source: DisasterSafety.org
