Emergency Tree Service in Lakewood, CA

What to do in the first ten minutes

• Get everyone away from under it and stay away. A tree that has already moved once is holding tension you cannot see. Hung-up limbs shift without warning.
• If any wire is involved, treat it as live. Do not touch the tree, the fence, or anything against it. Call Southern California Edison and 911, then call us. We do not cut trees on power lines, and neither should anyone else.
• Do not go up a ladder with a chainsaw. More people are hurt cleaning up after storms than during them, almost always by homeowners on ladders working over their heads.
• Take photos before anything moves. Wide shots and close shots. Your insurance company will ask, and once we clear it the scene is gone.
• Then call us and tell us what it is sitting on.

When these calls come in

Our emergency phone runs hot in two situations. The first is a Santa Ana event, when dry offshore wind funnels across the flat ground here with nothing to break it. Palms, eucalyptus, and top-heavy ficus take the worst of it, and the failures are usually whole limbs rather than whole trees.

The second is a winter storm that soaks the ground and then brings wind behind it. That combination is the one that puts entire trees over, because our shallow root plates lose their hold in saturated soil. If it has rained for two days and the forecast says wind, that is the night we expect the phone to ring.

How the response works

The first visit is about making the property safe, not making it pretty. A crew stabilizes anything under tension, cuts the hazard back in controlled sections rather than dropping it, and gets weight off your structure. If a trunk is across the driveway or blocking the alley, that gets opened up first so you are not trapped.

Once nothing is going to move on its own, we walk the property with you and lay out what still needs doing. Sometimes that is finishing the removal in daylight. Sometimes it is a planned removal in daylight the following week. Sometimes the tree survives fine and the answer is preventive thinning on what is left so the same thing does not happen next season.

Debris hauling is included. If the root plate came out of the ground, we can clear the stump later once insurance has seen it.

Insurance, honestly

We are not adjusters and we will not pretend to be. What we can tell you is what we see in the wood: whether the failure came from decay, borer damage, root loss, or plain wind on a healthy tree. We document the work with photos and give you an itemized invoice you can submit.

As a general rule, policies tend to respond when a tree hits something insured, like a house, a garage, or a fence. A healthy tree that falls in open yard is often the homeowner's cost. Check with your carrier before you assume either way, and get the photos first.

What emergency work costs

More than the scheduled version of the same job, and we will not pretend otherwise. Night work, hazardous positions, and pulling a crew off other jobs all cost real money. We give you the number before we start cutting, even at midnight, and it does not change afterward.

Be careful with the trucks that appear in a neighborhood the morning after a storm asking for cash. Ask for a license and an insurance certificate. If they cannot produce both, whatever happens in your yard lands on you.

Call now

If something is unsafe right now, phone (562) 502-1431. If it can wait until morning but you want it looked at, reach us anytime through the form and we will get back to you first thing.