Episode transcript
This is Emergency Tree Longview, and this episode is for the person who just looked up and saw a broken pine top hung in the crown of a tree, right over the bedroom or the driveway. If it is over a room somebody sleeps in tonight, don't wait for the end of this. Call us at (903) 500-7845. That's (903) 500-7845. For everyone else, give me about six minutes and you'll know why that limb is more dangerous than the ones that already fell, and what to do about it.
Why the stuck one is the scary one
The storm came through, the yard is cleaned up, and there's one limb left. It hasn't moved in three days. It looks stable. It is not stable. It is stuck, and stuck is not the same thing.
A hung limb is resting on branches that flex in every breeze and dry out a little more each day. The old timber hands called them widow-makers, and they got the name honestly. What lets one go can be a gust, a squirrel, or a warm afternoon that shrinks the wood just enough. Green loblolly wood is heavy, on the order of fifty pounds per cubic foot, so a six-inch limb twenty feet long is several hundred pounds coming down from sixty feet. Anything over about four inches thick hung up over a place people walk is worth treating as a real hazard.
Mark the drop zone and check the wires
Walk a circle under the limb wider than the limb is long. That's the drop zone. Keep kids, dogs, and cars out of it. Move the truck. It costs nothing and it's the one thing that actually protects people tonight.
Then look for wires. If the limb is touching a line, or even close to one, the tree work stops until the utility clears it. For most of Longview, Gladewater, White Oak, and Kilgore that's SWEPCO, and the number is 888-216-3523. SWEPCO will clear its own primary lines and it will do that for free, but it will not remove the limb from your yard afterward, and it does not trim the service drop that runs from the pole to your house. If the limb is on that drop, the utility usually has to disconnect the service so a crew can work, and then reconnect. Nobody touches a limb in contact with a line. Not the crew, not you.
Why you should not rope it down
Every crew in East Texas has the story. A homeowner, a rope, a pickup, and a trip to the hospital. The physics are against you. The limb is hung on branches under load, and pulling on it changes that load in ways you cannot read from the ground. When it releases, it does not slide down the rope. It swings. And the heavy butt end swings toward the anchor, which is you or your truck.
A ladder is worse. Nobody should be on a ladder under a loaded limb. A crew takes the same limb down in pieces, from a bucket or a climbing position outside the swing path, with rigging on every piece the whole way down.
What the storm did to the tree
Here's a Longview-specific thing to check while you're looking up. If the storm snapped the top out of a pine, the tree is usually still alive, but it now has an open wound at the top. Ips engraver beetles are drawn to exactly that kind of damage, and in a hot summer they find a wounded pine within days. So a topped loblolly this spring is often a beetle-hit loblolly by August. Look at the bark for reddish boring dust. If you see it, the limb is the small problem and the tree is on the same clock.
Also look at the base. Our red clay soaks up a wet spring, and the shallow roots of a big pine don't hold in it the way you'd hope. If the ground on one side of the trunk has heaved or cracked, the whole tree is leaning, not just hung. That's a different call and a more urgent one.
Our storm season runs March through June, with straight-line winds off squall lines doing most of the damage, and then summer pop-up storms with downbursts through August. Ice storms do the same thing from the other direction. Ice can add several times a limb's own weight, and pine limbs snap under it and hang. So this is not a once-a-decade problem here. It's an every-year one.
What it usually costs
Most hung-limb jobs in the Longview area run a few hundred dollars. Height moves the number, access moves it, and whether the limb hangs over a structure moves it most. A limb over the back fence is a scheduled visit this week. A limb over a bedroom, a driveway you use every day, or a play area gets same-day treatment, and you should say so when you call. A storm-night limb over occupied space is an emergency call, full stop.
If you have more than one limb hung after a storm, say that too. Once a bucket truck is on the lot the second and third limbs are cheap compared to the first.
What to do right now
Mark the drop zone and stay out of it. Check for wires and call SWEPCO if the limb is anywhere near one. Do not rope it, do not climb for it. Then call and tell us what the limb is over. The number is (903) 500-7845. Again, (903) 500-7845. This has been Emergency Tree Longview. We'll talk through what the limb needs and get it down in pieces, not all at once.