It's 2am, the wind is still blowing, and there's a 60-foot maple across your kitchen. We hope you never need this article. If you do, the order matters.
Step 1: Get everyone safe
If anyone is hurt, call 911 first. No tree work is worth waiting on emergency services for. Get everyone away from the affected area of the house and stay clear until you know the structure isn't going to come down further.
Step 2: Treat every wire as live
If there are any power lines involved — and there often are — do not approach them, do not touch the tree if any part of it is in contact with a wire, and do not assume a downed line is dead. Even a wire that looks de-energized can have backup power flowing through it. In ComEd territory (most of the Fox Valley), call 1-800-EDISON-1 (1-800-334-7661) for downed lines. They'll dispatch a crew to make the area safe before any tree work happens.
Step 3: Call us — (630) 687-4562
Once safety is handled, call us. For after-hours emergencies, leave a voicemail — we monitor it. Have ready:
- Your address and the best phone number to reach you
- What was hit (house, garage, fence, car)
- Whether utilities are involved (power, gas, water)
- Whether the tree is still attached, free, or partially uprooted
We'll dispatch a crew and walk you through what to expect over the phone.
Step 4: Photograph everything before it moves
Your insurance carrier will want photographs of the damage as it happened — from multiple angles, in good light if possible. Phones are fine. Get wide shots of the property and tight shots of every point of damage. Don't move anything yet, even if you can.
Step 5: Notify your insurance
Most homeowner policies cover tree removal when the tree has damaged a covered structure — the house, the garage, a fence, sometimes a driveway. Trees that fall in the yard without hitting anything are usually not covered. Call your carrier's claims line and start a claim. Get the claim number — we'll want it for our paperwork.
Pro tip: Take a quick video walk-through of the whole property at the same time. Drone shots if you can get them. The more documentation, the faster the claim moves.
Step 6: Let us coordinate with everyone else
Trees on houses are rarely a single-trade job. You'll often need a roofer, sometimes an emergency board-up service, sometimes a structural engineer, sometimes a tarp crew before the next round of weather arrives. We're happy to coordinate the order of operations — there's usually a right sequence, and getting it wrong creates extra cost and extra damage.
What happens next
Once we're on-site, we'll secure the area, assess the load on the structure, and develop a plan. Sometimes we can clear the tree the same day. Sometimes the structure needs to be stabilized first. Either way, we document every step — before-photos, in-progress photos, after-photos, written description — and provide a formatted invoice your insurance adjuster will recognize.
