This will likely be an expensive scrounge, especially because I have plenty of standing dead Red Oak in the woods away from more critical infrastructure. Two nights ago we had a tremendous wind and rain storm. Sadly this big old oak uprooted, and fell toward my driveway and my private utility lines.
It took out both the power and neutral lines, but sort of caught itself on the slope of the land and the super strong comcast cable. In the process it also took down a young hickory there.
There was some urgency to getting my wife out in her car, so I pole sawed a path past the low hanging branches and severed power lines and got her out. Left me with some sketchy sawing to get the branches off the line. I decided to let a pro read the various tensions, and put the right equipment to work. He strung a basket line around the limbs and stabilized the back side of the lines before taking the weight off:
Once he cleared the intended path of the power lines, he moved on to a long list of folks who had trees needing attention. I had a private Electrical Contractor reset the one utility pole that was listing badly then splice the several points the power lines were severed.
And, I started sawing up the tree. Today I'll press my small fleet of tractor, arch, ATV, and cart to move this off the edges of my driveway and into a convenient processing location. Both the Oak that was about 38" diameter (Is is still called DBH when it is uprooted and laying on the ground) and the much smaller Hickory were green trees, so once I have them hitched, I'll pull them to the two year from now pile.
And, since I am often asked - yes the last seven utility pole spans to my house are my private maintenance responsibility. Local power company stops at the third pole on my driveway. When something like this happens they promptly remove the fusible link there and leave me a kind of a greeting note. It took longer to get them to come back and re-engergize the repaired line than it did to remove the trees, and repair the lines.
I guess with access to the pole number database a super sleuth could find my home. That's ok with me - bring your saw and splitter.
you found something to keep you warm.
Any idea what kind of tree this is other then a big one. Mom told me where to find it but don't want to waist time if it's not worth it.
