TREE TIPS
— If you'd like to have your trees assessed, make sure you contact a certified arborist. You can search for tree experts online at www.georgiaaborist.org.
— If you need to hire a company to remove a tree, find one that has full liability and workman’s compensation, if possible. This will protect you if an employee is injured while removing the tree.
— Depending on where you live, you may need a permit before cutting down trees, even on your property.
— More answers to common questions can be found on the Georgia Forestry Commission's website, www.gfc.state.ga.us
Take a good look at the trees around your home. Are there plenty of green leaves? Flowers on the Dogwoods and Bradford Pears?
That’s a good start, tree experts say. But it doesn’t mean the trees are structurally sound, able to withstand the pounding rain and occasional powerful, storming winds of springtime in Atlanta. To really know if a tree is healthy, you’ve got to get to the root of the problem: the roots.
“The situation is that when the soils become saturated, the roots have a hard time holding on to them,” Joe Burgess, Georgia Forestry Commission senior forester, said Monday. “It’s like trying to grab spaghetti. The roots are essentially slipping through the soil.”
With some 9 million trees in metro Atlanta, it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint every potential problem. But every year, some of the urban forest topples, and the results can be deadly.
Around 2 a.m. Monday, a DeKalb County teacher was killed when a 60-foot oak tree crashed into her home on Oakcliff Road, in a neighborhood off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in northwest Atlanta. It took crews about 2½ hours to remove the tree and reach Patricia Pusha, who likely died from the initial impact, Atlanta fire Assistant Chief Chris Wessels said.
Pusha, 60, a science teacher at Ronald E. McNair Middle School, was originally from Savannah, according to her profile on the school’s website.
A tree like the one that fell on Pusha’s home could weigh at least 30 tons or more, according to Neil Norton, executive director with the Georgia Arborist Association. While it’s not yet known whether the tree that fell on Pusha’s home is to blame or Mother Nature, the tragedy should serve as an alert that tree health should be priority, especially this time of year.
“We get most of our calls now, in the spring,” Norton said.
Sometimes, there’s no way around it. A dead tree may need to be cut down, particularly if its target is your home, Norton said. Other times, there may be ways to save trees and get them healthier, experts say.
“The important thing to remember is that you really need to take a look at your trees, or have someone else do it, and determine if they are structurally sound,” Burgess said. “Look at the root system, because the root system is really a critical point of failure.”
During periods of drought, including some of the most recent dry spells between 2007 and 2009, metro trees suffered and were weakened. Some metro trees are still trying to recover, according to experts.
But during a wet April, trees are dealing with the opposite situation, Burgess said. Highly saturated soil has made trees weaker, more likely to topple, he said.
“Unless we have something catastrophic like a tornado or a hurricane, the majority of the trees in an urban situation are structurally sound,” Burgess said.
—Mike Morris and John Spink contributed to this report.
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