Penn Hills, Allegheny County
Something came down. Call and describe it.
Chris picks up and triages on the phone. Anything on a house, a car, or a wire moves to the front of the line. We will tell you straight whether it needs a truck tonight or a slot next week, and we will not talk you into an emergency you do not have.
Anything touching a wire is Duquesne Light first
Not us, not a neighbor with a saw. Wet storm wood conducts, and the ground near the base of a tree holding a service drop is not a place to stand and look. Call the utility, get it cleared, then call us. After a storm the wires are usually tangled in the debris rather than obviously involved, so walk the yard with your eyes up before you touch any of it.
What is urgent and what genuinely waits
You are trying to work out whether to call at eleven at night or in the morning. Here is the same sort we do on the phone, so you can do it yourself while you are looking at it.
Call now
Tree on the structure
Roof, garage, porch, car. The load path matters more than the size. Anything resting on a load-bearing wall is pushing weight into the house continuously and rocking with every gust. Cutting it wrong drops the whole thing through the ceiling.
A limb hung up in the canopy
The trade calls these widow-makers and the name is earned. A branch tears loose, falls partway, and lodges forty feet up. From the ground it reads as parked. It is not parked, it is wedged, and you cannot see what it is wedged on from underneath it.
A split trunk or torn fork
A vertical crack running up the stem, or a union that has torn open. That tree is already failing. It is just failing slowly, and it will finish on its own schedule.
A lean with the soil heaved at the base
A mound of dirt lifting on one side and a gap on the other means roots have torn. The root plate is all that is holding it up and part of it has already released. Saturated clay will not take that grip back once it is gone.
The drive or the only way out is blocked
Not dangerous, but it is an emergency in the sense that matters. We clear enough to get you moving and come back for the rest.
Can wait for a scheduled slot
A tree already flat on the lawn
This is the one people get backwards. A tree that fell all the way down has finished moving. It is heavy and awkward and it may have taken a fence with it, but the physics are done and it is safe to leave a few days.
Brush and limbs on the ground
Ugly, and it will kill the grass under it eventually, but it is not going anywhere. Book it in and we will take it with the rest.
Small deadwood shed out of a canopy
Normal, especially after the first hard front of the season. Worth a look at some point to see what else is loose up there, not worth a night call.
A tree that simply looks worse than it did
Thinning crown, a lean you have not measured, bark coming off. All worth an arborist looking at it, none of it an emergency this week.
This is what a split trunk looks like close up, and it is the reason we treat one as urgent even when the tree is still standing and still has a full green crown.
The fibers have already let go along the grain. What is holding it is a fraction of the wood that used to be there, and every gust works the crack a little further down. It does not heal and it does not stabilize.
Why the half-fallen tree is the dangerous one
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and almost everyone has it backwards.
A tree that fell partway and caught on something is still carrying load. Every fiber in that stem is holding up whatever weight did not make it to the ground, and the moment a saw changes the balance, all of it moves at once and it moves fast. We have written at length about the physics of that on the blog. The short version for tonight is that a saw is the wrong tool for a loaded stem and the injuries from getting it wrong are severe and common.
A bent, caught stem is worse again. It releases like a spring and the butt end travels, frequently to exactly where somebody was standing to make the cut.
So the leaning, hung-up, half-down tree is the one that needs the phone call, and the one lying flat on the lawn is usually the one that can wait. If what you have is genuinely stable and on the ground, it becomes a scheduled removal or part of a wider cleanup rather than a night call.
While you wait for us
Keep people and pets away from under it, including from the far side. Things move in directions that are not obvious.
Do not pull on it with a truck or a strap. That is how a caught tree releases early and in the wrong direction.
Photograph everything before anything moves, wide and close. Your insurer will want it and so will we.
Leave the saw in the garage. Storm wood is not firewood cutting.
The one lying flat on your lawn can wait a week. The one caught halfway down is the one to call about tonight.
Chris, triaging Penn Hills storm calls
Insurance, documentation, and what we hand you
Most Penn Hills storm calls end up in front of an adjuster, and the difference between a smooth claim and a fight is usually documentation rather than the damage itself.
- Photograph the scene before anything is touched. Wide shots showing the tree, the structure, and where they meet, then close-ups of the actual damage.
- If you already started clearing before you thought about the claim, photograph whatever is left where it sits, brush pile included, and tell the adjuster what you moved. Nobody is going to hold tidying up against you. The claims that get difficult are the ones with no pictures at all.
- Get the claim opened before the repair conversation, not after.
- We write up what we did and why, with photos, in language an adjuster can use. Ask for it and it comes with the invoice.
We are insured and carry PA HIC #163598, which matters here because an uninsured cutter working on your property after a storm is a liability that lands on you. More on how we handle claims paperwork on the insurance assistance page, and storm work we have finished around the township is in the gallery.
Penn Hills, Allegheny County. A front can hit the ridge, the plans and the hollows three different ways.
Storm and emergency questions
What people ask at two in the morning, answered here so you do not have to.
Do you actually answer at night?
Chris does. You will get a person rather than a service, and you will get a straight answer about whether this needs a truck tonight or a slot in the morning. If the honest answer is that it can wait, that is what you will hear. We do not manufacture emergencies.
How fast can you be here after a storm?
Depends what came through and how wide it hit. A front that just rains on Verona Road can be dropping limbs up on the ridge and doing something else again in the hollows, so after a real storm the whole township calls at once. We triage: anything on a house, a car, or a wire gets stabilized first wherever it is, and yard trees wait their turn. You get told where you actually sit in the line, which is more useful than a time nobody can keep.
A tree came off my neighbor’s property onto my house. Whose problem is it?
Practically speaking, your insurer handles the damage to your house and then decides whether to pursue theirs, and that is between the carriers. What matters tonight is getting the weight off the structure safely. We deal with the tree and give you documentation that works for either carrier. Do not wait for the ownership question to be settled before making it safe.
Can I just tarp the roof myself and deal with the tree later?
Only if the tree is genuinely off the structure and stable. If the tree is still resting on the roof, going up there puts you on a surface that is being loaded and moved by something you cannot control. Get the tree off first, then tarp, and we can usually get a tarp on for you the same visit.
Is emergency work more expensive?
Night and weekend callouts cost more than a scheduled visit because we are paying a crew to come out at short notice, and we tell you that on the phone rather than at the end. What we will not do is use the situation to inflate the number. If it can safely wait for a scheduled slot, we will say so and book it, which is usually cheaper for you.
The power company already cut the tree off the line and left the rest.
That is normal and it is exactly what they do. Their job ends at the conductor, and what is left is often a butchered stem, a hung section, or half a tree with no crown on one side. That is our work. Call us and we will finish it properly and deal with what the utility left behind.
If it is happening right now, call
Describe what you are looking at and Chris will tell you whether it is a tonight job or a next-week job. If it is easier to type it out with a couple of photos, send those instead and you will get an answer back quickly.