Emergency tree service
A tree on the house, a car pinned, a driveway or a road blocked: do not fill in a form, call. A person answers, we tell you on the phone how dangerous it is and what to do until we arrive, and if wires are involved we will tell you to call AEP before anyone goes near it.
The first hour, before any crew arrives
- People first, property second Get everyone out of the rooms under the tree and keep children and dogs out of the yard. A tree that has partly failed is still moving, just too slowly to see.
- Wires anywhere near it: stop, and call AEP If the tree or anything touching it is on or near a power line, that is the utility’s emergency, not ours and not yours. Call AEP, stay well back, and treat every line and everything in contact with it as live. No tree crew works a line until the utility has made it dead.
- Photograph everything Wide shots, close-ups, the point where the tree meets the structure. Your insurance claim runs on pictures taken before anything was moved.
- Do not cut anything A stem across a roof or a car is under tension, and one wrong cut lets the load shift all at once. This hour is when well-meaning chainsaw work turns a bad day into a hospital day.
- Call us and say what you see On the house or off it, leaning or down, wires or no wires, roughly how big. That is enough for us to order the list honestly and tell you when we can be there.
What counts as an emergency
A tree or limb on the house, the garage or a car. The structure is holding weight it was never designed for, and rain follows through the opening. The job is to get the load off carefully, on rope or with the lift, then get the hole tarped before the weather gets in.
A driveway or road blocked. A trunk across your driveway pins you in; one across the street is everyone’s problem. For a public road, call the city or the sheriff’s non-emergency line as well as us, since the right of way is theirs to reopen.
A tree that has half gone. Roots lifted, a fork split, a heavy limb hanging in the crown. Nothing has hit anything yet, which is exactly why now is the cheap moment: the same tree dealt with after it lands on the kitchen is a storm damage job plus a roof.
What does not count: a standing tree you have worried about for a while. That one deserves attention too, on a booked visit at a normal price rather than an emergency call-out. Book it and sleep better.
The calls that cannot wait
Asked with the tree still on the roof
Should I call you or my insurance company first?
Us, then the insurer while you wait. Getting the weight off the structure limits the damage, which is in everyone’s interest, and the claim is built on your photographs, not on the order of the phone calls. See storm damage removal for what a policy does and does not pay.
The tree is tangled in the power line to my house. Who do I call?
AEP, before anyone else, and stand well back until they have been. The line from the pole to your house can be live even when your power is out. Once the utility has made it safe, we do the tree.
Can I at least tarp the roof myself?
Not while the tree or any part of it is still on the roof. The structure under you is carrying an unknown load and the wood on it can shift. Once we have the weight off, tarping is sensible and we will tell you when it is safe.
A limb is hanging in the crown but nothing has fallen yet. Is that an emergency?
Treat it as one if anything you care about is underneath: a bedroom, a driveway, a swing set. A hung limb comes down when wind and gravity decide. The fix is quick for a crew with ropes and a lift, and a very bad idea from a ladder.
What does emergency work cost?
More than the same tree on a booked visit, honestly, because it jumps the line and often runs after hours; if a structure is damaged, much of it usually sits inside the insurance claim. You get the price before we start, in writing, like every other job. For how tree work is priced when it can wait, see what removal costs in Reynoldsburg.
Other things we do
Where we work
If it is happening now, the phone beats the form
Call, say what you see, and we will tell you what to do in the next ten minutes, even if the first instruction is to call AEP instead of us.