Emergency Tree Removal After a Nor'easter — What to Do

You wake up after a nor’easter and there’s a tree on your roof, or across your driveway, or hung up in the canopy of three other trees waiting to come down. The combination of stress, urgency, and unfamiliarity with what happens next is what gets homeowners taken advantage of by storm-chaser contractors.

This is the order of operations we’d give a friend.

Right now, before anything else

1. Make sure everyone is safe and out of the area. Family, pets, anyone who came over to help. Nobody under or near the failed tree.
2. Call 911 if anyone is injured or trapped. Don’t try to free anyone yourself if you can’t safely get to them — the tree is under tension and can shift in dangerous ways.
3. Check for downed power lines. If a tree has hit or is touching electrical lines — house service drop, transformer, anything — assume the lines are energized and stay back at least 30 feet. Call PSE&G at 1-800-436-7734 to report it. Don’t go near the tree until they confirm the lines are de-energized.
4. Stay out of damaged structures. A tree on a house has done structural damage you can’t see. Don’t go inside the affected room. Don’t let kids run through to grab toys. If the tree is bouncing in the wind, the roof framing is moving with it.

In the next hour

5. Document the damage. Photos and video, from a safe distance. Wide shots showing the whole tree and where it’s resting. Close-ups of any damage to the structure. Time-stamped from your phone is fine. Don’t move anything yet — insurance assessors want to see the damage as it landed.
6. Call your homeowner’s insurance. Don’t wait. The faster you open a claim, the faster you have an adjuster on the way. Most major insurers have 24/7 claim lines. Your policy almost certainly covers tree-on-structure incidents up to a cap (often $500–$1,500 for the tree removal portion plus the cost of structural repair).
7. Tarp critical exposed areas if you can do it safely. If the tree damaged the roof but is no longer actively crushing it, getting a tarp over the hole keeps weather out until permanent repair. If you can’t do this safely, your tree contractor can. This is part of what we do on emergency calls.
8. Call a tree service. Specifically, call one with a real 24/7 emergency line and crews on the ground in your county. Storm-chaser contractors who blow into town after major events are usually unlicensed, often uninsured, and gone before any warranty issues surface.

What good emergency tree response looks like

When a competent emergency crew arrives, the first 20 minutes go like this:

• Site walk and stabilization. The foreman walks the damage, identifies tension points, and confirms with you what’s covered (the tree on the house, the limb across the driveway, the hanger in the maple over the garage).
• Power and gas confirmation. If utilities are involved, the foreman waits for utility crews to confirm safety before any cutting begins.
• Tarp and cover work. If the structure is exposed and the tree is stable, tarps go over the hole right away. If the tree is unstable, that’s the priority instead.
• Rigging plan. Big trees on structures rarely come off in one piece. The crew rigs the tree to multiple anchor points so when wood is cut it goes where they want it, not where gravity pulls it.

What you should expect to not see:

• A crew running chainsaws within 5 minutes of arrival without a plan
• A foreman who can’t tell you which insurance carriers they’ve worked with
• A quote written on a notebook page with no scope of work
• Pressure to sign anything before you’ve had a chance to read it

Insurance specifics

A few things that catch homeowners off guard:

• Your policy generally covers tree removal when the tree hit a covered structure (house, garage, fence). The cap is typically $500–$1,500, sometimes up to $2,500 on policies with extended endorsements.
• A tree that fell in your yard but hit nothing is generally NOT covered. Yard cleanup is on you.
• Your policy generally pays regardless of whose tree it was. If the neighbor’s oak fell on your roof, your policy pays for your damage; your insurer may then go after the neighbor’s insurance (subrogation), but you don’t have to fight that battle.
• Document everything before cleanup. Once the tree is cut up and gone, the evidence of how it fell is gone. Your adjuster needs photos.
• Ask your contractor for an itemized invoice. “Tree removal: $2,500” is not enough for most adjusters. They want labor, equipment, hours, debris disposal, separately.
• Get a copy of the contractor’s COI (Certificate of Insurance). Your homeowner’s insurance may want it as part of the claim file.

How to spot a storm chaser

After major weather events, a wave of out-of-state contractors with magnetic signs on F-150s rolls into the impacted region looking for cash work. Some are legitimate; many are not. Red flags:

• Door-to-door solicitation immediately after a storm
• Out-of-state license plates on the truck
• Cash-only or cash-preferred pricing
• Pressure to sign immediately (“I have a crew with me, we can start right now”)
• No physical local address
• No verifiable insurance
• Quotes far below or far above the going rate
• “We’ll work directly with your insurance” claims that bypass you

Legitimate contractors after major storms are slammed and usually book days out. The contractor with crews available right this minute may be the bad one, not the good one.

What we do differently

We’ve been doing tree work in Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester counties long enough that we don’t need to chase storms. We have a real 24/7 emergency line, we’re insured to the levels New Jersey requires (and more), and we send written estimates and itemized invoices that adjusters expect.

The other thing we do: we tell you the truth about what’s urgent and what isn’t. A tree on a house is urgent. A limb in the yard that didn’t hit anything can wait until Monday. We don’t gouge during emergencies and we don’t talk you into work that doesn’t need doing.

Save our number now

The single best storm preparation step is save (856) 446-0775 in your phone before you need it. Don’t be looking up tree services with a flashlight at 2 a.m. with the wind still howling. Save the number now, ideally under “Tree Service” so you can find it fast.

We answer.

For more on what we handle during these events, see our emergency storm damage page. For longer-term planning — proactive structural pruning that reduces storm vulnerability — see tree trimming and pruning. And for trees that should have come down before the storm, tree removal.