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Finishing a week's vacation in Mobile, AL. Going from mid 70s back to
Cleveland's snow and ice. My daughter emailed that the power was out and there was a big limb down in my back yard. My siberian elm, no doubt. I guess my first job of 2011 will be right in my back yard.
Phil
 
I spent the afternoon yesterday cleaning up storm damage in my own yard. My poor river birch broke in half in the ice storm in late January, I also lost a part of a dogwood, lots of limbs and tops out of the sassafras grove as well as an entire sassafras. It was more of a nuisance than anything else. We spend so much time taking care of clients damage, seems like there is never time to get to your own.

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I spent the afternoon yesterday cleaning up storm damage in my own yard. My poor river birch broke in half in the ice storm in late January, I also lost a part of a dogwood, lots of limbs and tops out of the sassafras grove as well as an entire sassafras. It was more of a nuisance than anything else. We spend so much time taking care of clients damage, seems like there is never time to get to your own.

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That sucks!
 
I just looked at a big rotten elm, the truncks were very badly decayed and the whole thing was strung up with cables, at least 6. Its half dead and unstable as all Hell.

Its in the back yard of the building Joan Conroy rents for her interior decorator( furniture re-arranger:msp_rolleyes:) business. Joan has always been cool and understanding when I do work for her and we have a good professional relationship but the owners of this building practically hung up on me when I started to explain the situation.
This is a real ####ed up tree. If I cut one side and the other falls... well I ain't gonna be excepting the liablity on my part. The owners wish to stay in denial and leave it on the back burner. There really isn't any expensive targets if it falls but people do walk around the yard.
I don't mind, it will be easier to remove if its falls over but if limbs break out it gonna be ugly cause of the cables. I could get a lift in and survive doing the removal but like I said its a can a worms... an institutional size can, like what they got in resturants.
 
Before I saw my first real ice storm, I used to wish for them when things got lean. For the past 15 or so years I have been saying that I could not wish that on anyone.

Look at how similar the breakage is. I'm sure that there is a simple compound formula that can express the relationship between load, stem diameter and length, and angle of cant to the limb. All modified by species.

Or am I repeating myself?
 
Yeah, sure does!

Awhile back I had to go over to The Lesbian's on Frog Hollow ( man, if they ever find out I say that I done for) to deal with a birch leaning over the drive and wires from the ice. The one lead I could just reduce the crown real nice and up it went. This may be a good way to prune these little tree instead of climbing them. Just winch it down and have at it.
The other lead I had to set a rope and porty to haul it up cause whatever I cut would have dropped on the wire,plus it was higher than the first lead. I just retreived the rigging yesterday, maybe I should have left it in but I was in the process of getting the tree stuff together for the new season.



Nothing usuall, just got back from plowing. One of my new clients is an older nurse and has to be out early. The first time I went to plow them she had her car at the bottom of the drive. The drive is a doozy, nothing like Peabody's but I am like " hey, why don't you keep the car in the garage instead of down by the road?"
The lady was walking down the drive to her car which I thought to be unaceptable.Plus the road plows were covering it in,not to mention now I can't get in.They told me they had to do that with the last plow guy. I am like " no, no, no, what is the sense of paying me when you can't drive straight outta the garage?" Hey, what's the sense of having a garge then?
It took awhile for them to grasp the fact that they could put the last plow guy's horse#### behind them. In most cases even with a small storm, like this last one, I service all my drives twice. The first is just a quicky then I come back to dress it up.You have to do this for a lot of reasons but the main one is to ensure good service. The first shot usually is .25 hours and the next is usually more.
 
December 29-31, 2006 Ice Storm Follow Up Visit
Here are some pics of a ice storm I worked. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen! It is amazing what ice can do, Busting poles and bending fence posts. You would think the wires or barb wire would break first.

It's weird for me seeing the "devastation" from an ice storm in a region with no trees. Different.
 
No, i'm not saying it's a bad thing, just not the image that pops into my mind at the term "ice storm." I think montreal in 98 when i hear ice storm and the trees that were down there, and having to cut tunnels to get down the roads.
 
Most of the pics were in rural Nebraska, alot of fields. There are alot more trees in the cities and towns. I worked in Grand Island and Kearney every tree had damage. Nebraska is home of Arbor Day.
 
Keep your shirt on, i didn't mean to be insulting. It's just that a major part of our line damage in ice storms is caused by trees falling on the lines and adding even more weight on top of the ice. I haven't seen many lines fall over just from ice buildup alone, although i have seen transformers fall off from ice buildup as well as cross arms breaking. But actual pole breakage from ice seems rarer, at least on the storms i've been on, and i've worked up to four inches of ice. I actually appreciated the different perspective.

Although talking to a hydro guy many years ago, he was saying they build their power infrastructure to handle an inch or two of ice.
 
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Who wasn't. :laugh:

We were running a skidder bucket at the time, traveling with a lowboy. Cut our way into montreal, until they realized what the skidder was good for and then sent us to quebec to work offroad.

Good point.

We were supposed to have a skidder bucket coming but the truck driver didn't see low lines and tore the bucket off on the way up. It was dark though.
 
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Good point.

We were supposed to have a skidder bucket coming but the truck driver didn't see low lines and tore the bucket off on the way up. It was dark though.

Yikes, that's not good. It was the slowest trip i ever took. We left that friday night from syracuse, took us more than 20 hours to get to montreal, all our other crews got left at watertown. Lifting lines and cutting stuff off the roads, felt like i walked the whole way.
 

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