Drought-Weakened Trees Vulnerable To Winter

EAST POINT, Ga. -- The bill for the damage done by our three plus year drought is coming due, in the form of toppled trees and the destruction they do.

Weakened root systems from the stress of little water, soil softened by the drenching rain we received earlier this week, and strong winds that blew through the area yesterday, all contributed to trees falling across north Georgia.

In East Point, a huge oak crushed a car, its owner was in the house at the time, unaware, until her brother rushed in.

"He was sitting on the porch and all of a sudden he slowly saw the tree falling," Sukenya Davis said. "And it went toward the house and he stated all of a sudden the wind came and blew it back from the house and it landed on the car."

Arborists warn that the trees that fell after the recent rain and wind are a preview of what could happen throughout the rest of the winter.

Think of Metro Atlanta's trees as the economy. From a distance, everything looked fine. But on the inside, there was rot. When an ill wind blew, some could not stand.

A 50-year-old pine tree blew over in Decatur and landed on one home's roof.

"The drought over the past three years has caused quite a bit of root damage to our trees in Atlanta," said certified arborist for the Bartlett Tree Company, Art Morris. "And when you couple a damaged root system with a heavy wind it can cause a root failure very much like this one."

As with the economy, you can protect yourself if you look just beneath the surface.
"We may have been able to test for root rot to identify that problem under the ground," Morris said. "It's possible that we could've predicted this failure and recommended a removal for this tree before it fell."

Many tree companies have certified arborists who will examine your trees for free.
It often costs more to remove a tree after it has toppled, than before. And removing failing trees can not only prevent damage to property, but also injury and death.

Even if a tree is diagnosed with root rot, there are some things that can be done, short of taking it down, that can prevent something like this. One thing to do is to remove dead limbs.

"Thinning of the canopy often helps when you're talking about wind, because it reduces the wind load of the canopy," Morris said. "Sometime removing one or two limbs on the tree or thinning one or two limbs over the house will reduce the risk of a failure."

The storms of winter raise the threat that many more trees will fall. The hope is, like the economy, when the dead wood is gone, Atlanta's forest will be healthy.