Interesting dilemma facing Portland area homeowner. A 150 ft tall tree is leaning with its root ball exposed, in danger of crashing on a home after last week’s storms. Homeowner’s insurance company says they don’t cover “imminent danger”. One or two 200 ft cranes are required to remove the tree at $30,000 rental each. Failing that, a large Chinook helicopter at a $100,000/day rental would be the solution. Now that the peril has been identified, I’d be worried that the frigging insurance company will find a way to reject the claim in any event.
As this is a wealthy area of Portland, the homeowner is considering the Mary Lou Retton remedy of a GoFundMe campaign. {{ LOL }}
Don’t you live in Sequim, WA. I thought Sequim got very little rain?
I remember that Seattle Pioneer often counseled about the danger of trees and advocated clear-cutting. {{ LOL }}
I do like these big evergreen trees, just not close to my home. There’s a home a few doors down with a tree trunk about 6 ft in diameter. It must be close to 100 ft tall.
The couldn’t Everybody would have an imminent danger. “Oh, the wiring in my house is old and might catch on fire.” “Oh the roof is going to leak or collapse”. So they’ve figured out they only pay for actual damage.
However in this case I agree with you, now that the imminent danger has been documented, they’ll probably find some way to weasel out once the tree actually falls.
It is a shame that it is not threatening electrical service. Duke was doing line maintenance in our area last summer. The crew cleared dead limbs and trees overhanging their lines. I noticed that we had a dead hickory tree that would fall on their line and pointed it out to the crew. They removed it and cut it into 18" sections and staked it up for me. When I split it and stacked it, I had almost half a cord of wood.
Yes, that’s right. Sequim is in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains which shelter us from the prevailing southwesterly “Pineapple Express” in winter. Sequim tends to get 1/2" of rain when Seattle gets 2" on the same day.
But we are in the bull’s eye of the occasional storm funneled through the Frazier River valley (Canada). The Frazier River flow brings cold weather (freezing and below) while typical winter temperatures rarely fall below freezing even at night.
The storm that blew down the tree in November 2022 was a windstorm more than a rainstorm. The ground was already saturated because October-November 2022 was unusually rainy. The tree was next to a slope so the roots weren’t fully protected.
I’ll go out on a limb here…is insurance supposed to pay for properly maintaining your house and property?
Hey look, this outlet is sparking when a heavy load is plugged in, so I should call my insurance company and have them fix it because otherwise they’ll have to pay when my house burns down.
Mom grew up in Sandy, an early suburb of Portland. In 1932, when the great depression was biting deep, a group of unemployed loggers came down the street looking for dangerous trees to cut. Grandma answered the door, and brought them out back to look at the huge pine towering over the house. Their leader discussed the problem of shallow roots in wet soil, big winds, and the liklihood of the tree falling. Grandma looked carefully at the tree, the house, and then turned to them and said “Why yes, it could easily fall into the house and crush my daughters in their beds, but then it would also certainly also kill my husband and me just a little later, and so we would all go together, and that is just fine if the Lord so Wills.” Then she invited them to stay for lunch.
I went and looked (again) at the house eighty years later, and the great pine was still there, and still huge and healthy.
How much would insurance cost if it covered the cost of reducing the amount it may have to pay out in the future?
This sort of came up in a conversation I was having with a physical therapist who was working with me on an arthritic knee that had limited my activity. She was evaluating my progress, which was very good in the way they look at it.
My pain level was manageable.
I was able to perform the daily functions of living.
I was able to walk a few dozen feet without significant pain or danger of falling.
The strength in my affected leg had improved.
The problem with this standard is that it will not prevent or slow the rapid deterioration of my overall health if I only maintain those low standards and those are all that Medicare or any insurance will cover.
When that tree crushes your house, the insurance company will cover the damage. When that knee injury causes your cardiac health to degenerate to the point that you have a heart attack going up the stairs …
Gee - ZUSS that’s expensive tree removal. Round here we have tree companies with crane trucks towing shredders that will take something like that down and chip it for a few $K.
Which is exactly why I had several “Q-tip” 60-80 ft white pine trees taken down around my house back in '10. Crane truck picked those things up like toothpicks.
I wonder (not much) if AFTER having that tree / those trees removed, the insurance company would (slightly) reduce the insurance rate in recognition of a reduction of “location-specific” risk.
Local Portland TV news station updated story this evening. Homeowner was able to find a family-run firm that could take down the tree for less than $10,000 without the use of cranes or helicopters. They are using lumberjacks to climb the tree and cut it down in 10 ft pieces, one at a time and hoisting them to the ground. Obviously, daredevils.
God bless our immigrant labor. But for them, Private Equity and their $100,000 helicopter rentals would bleed us dry.
Not necessarily. We had a tree split in a storm, with one half happily falling away from the house. The side that remained went down to the trunk, where there was now a large crack from the one side of the Y falling off. The remaining half of the tree towered toward the house and would come crashing down into our bedroom if it fell. It was July 3rd and another northeaster was coming on July 5th. Insurance refused to touch it, and warned us they would not pay on damage due to lack of maintenance, which this would fall under.
We had a team come out on the 4th of July, happily charging us triple time. Unfortunate timing.
That’s was the error. Never notify an insurance company of an imminent peril. And document that you diligently called 15 different contractors to get quotes on fixing the problem, while waiting for the tree to fall.
Claims adjusters get bonuses for limiting what gets paid out.
And yet, pretty understandable. Of course, we more than made out with the 25K roof replacement from the hail storm later that summer. We needed a new roof in a few years anyway, and were looking to put the house on the market, with the new roof greatly adding to the buyers’ attraction.
