The storm is the loud part. The dangerous part is the week after — limbs still caught in the canopy, unions split but not yet separated, debris hiding what needs attention. We work in triage order and put the damage on paper before anything gets cut.
The most dangerous phase
A limb that broke but did not fall is the worst thing a storm leaves. It hangs on splintered fibers and comes down without warning on whoever is underneath raking. Hangers are why we tell people to look up before they clean up.
The quiet failures
A trunk union that split in the wind may still be holding — for now. Some can be cabled and saved, some have to come down, and the difference is not visible from the ground. An arborist makes that call before the next front.
The visible mess
Downed limbs, scattered brush, a lawn you cannot mow. The part everyone sees, and the part that matters least. It gets cleared — chipped, loaded, hauled — but it waits its turn behind everything hanging overhead.
Call 402-332-2839 any hour. Storm calls jump the queue; the nearest crew responds.
The working order
People first
Anything hanging over a door, walkway, driveway or play area comes down before anything else gets touched. If a limb is on a power line, the utility goes first and we stage until it is dead.
Then structures
Limbs resting on the roof, garage or fence come off with rigging, not gravity — lifted and lowered so the second impact never happens.
Then access
The driveway gets opened, the sidewalk cleared, the gate freed. You can live around a messy yard; you cannot live around a blocked drive.
Photographs before cuts
Anything that touches an insurance claim gets photographed exactly as the storm left it, before a saw starts. Cut and stacked, the evidence is gone.
Then everything else
Hangers pulled, split unions resolved, debris chipped and hauled, the lawn raked. The longest part and the least urgent — exactly why it goes last.
Hangers and small storm limbs
The lower end
Pulling hangers and clearing broken limbs is usually hours of work, not days. The cheapest thing on this page, and the one that most needs doing first.
A storm-split tree removed
$1,000 – $3,000 and up
A smaller storm-broken tree lands in our published small-removal range. A large one over a structure runs $4,000 to $8,000, same as any large removal — the storm changes the schedule, not the arithmetic.
Ignoring the hanger
The roof, the car, or worse
A caught limb does not reattach. It waits for wind, and lands on whatever is under it that day. Every storm season we take calls that started as a hanger someone decided could wait.
Every storm job is quoted before work starts, even the urgent ones — from photos over the phone when it truly cannot wait, in writing on site for everything else.
Hangers and broken limbs removed from the canopy, not just the ground
Photographs of the damage as the storm left it, before cutting starts
Written documentation of the work for your insurance claim
Limbs on structures rigged off, never rolled or dropped
Debris chipped, loaded and hauled — the yard rakeable when we leave
An arborist's read on every damaged tree left standing: keep, cable or remove
Roof, gutter and fence repair — we clear the tree; the contractor rebuilds what it hit
Power lines — anything on or near a live line waits for the utility, no exceptions
Stump grinding on storm removals, quoted alongside the job as its own line
Negotiating with your insurer — we supply documentation; the claim is yours to run
Text photos of the damage to 402-332-2839 for a straight read on what is urgent.
“In the aftermath of the March 2025 windstorm, I had two large, damaged pine trees that posed a potential hazard to my home and surrounding property.”
Stay out from under the trees. Look up for hanging limbs before you look down at debris, and photograph everything from safe ground. Do not start cutting or dragging — moving damaged wood changes the insurance picture and puts you under the limbs most likely to fall.
The phone is answered any hour, storm work jumps the queue, and the nearest crew responds. After a metro-wide storm, everyone is triaged: limbs on houses and hangers over doors get same-day attention; lawn debris waits behind them — including ours.
Policies vary, but tree damage to structures is commonly covered and cleanup of a tree that hit nothing often is not — your agent knows your policy. What we control is the documentation: photographs before anything is touched and a written scope, which is what a claim needs regardless.
Storms bring out-of-state chasers who work fast, price high and leave before the complaints arrive. Any legitimate company can show insurance, a local address and a written price first. We have been in Gretna since 1997; we will still be here when the claim settles.
Yes, when there is something under it. A hanger is held by broken fibers and releases without warning — the next gust, or nothing at all. Over a lawn nobody walks, it can wait a few days. Over a driveway, a door or a swing set, it cannot.
Often. A tree that lost less than a third of its canopy to clean breaks usually recovers with proper pruning, and some split unions can be cabled rather than removed. The call has to be made by someone who can read the wood — that is what the arborist visit is for.
Yes — chipping and hauling storm brush is ordinary work for us. It just gets scheduled as ordinary work, at ordinary prices, rather than billed at emergency rates because a storm was involved.
Free and no pressure
Every estimate is free and comes in writing before anything is booked.
The full picture on how urgent calls get handled.
When the tree is already down — on the house or off it.
The hardware that saves a split union worth saving.
Finding the weak unions before the next storm does.
The debris side, on its own when that is all you need.
Storms compress a year of tree failure into one night, and the aftermath sorts into two lists. The short list is genuinely urgent: hangers over places people walk, limbs on structures, split unions that will finish failing in the next wind. The long list is everything else — the cleanup that offends the eye but threatens nothing.
The short list gets emergency treatment: the phone answered any hour, the queue jumped, the nearest crew. The long list gets scheduled at normal prices, because that is what it is. Plenty of storm operators quote the whole yard at emergency rates while the adrenaline is up. We separate the lists on the first visit and tell you which is which — it usually makes the invoice smaller, and the urgent work happens faster because crews are not burning storm days raking lawns.
The other thing we hold the line on is paperwork. Photographs before cuts, a written scope after, every time a claim might be involved. Adjusters work from evidence, and the evidence is the damage as the storm left it — not a stack of firewood and a description. Five minutes with a camera before the saw starts has settled more claim disputes than any phone call we have ever made.
