Emergency & Storm Tree Removal in Valley Stream
A limb through the roof, a maple across the driveway, half a tree hanging over the wires after a nor'easter. Here is the order to do things in - and the two calls to make before you call anyone with a chainsaw.
First five minutes
- Wires down or touching the tree: stay away and call PSEG Long Island at 1-800-490-0075. Treat every wire as live. Nobody - not us, not you - touches a tree that is in contact with a line until PSEG has made it safe.
- Tree on the house: get everyone out from under the damaged section. If the ceiling is sagging or you can see sky, that room is closed until someone has looked at the structure.
- Photograph everything before anything moves. Wide shots, close shots, the date on your phone. This is what your insurance adjuster will ask for, and it is gone the moment the first cut is made.
- Then call us. Tell us: on the house, on a car, in the wires, or on the ground. That is how we sort the queue.
What storms do to Valley Stream specifically
The South Shore gets hit from two directions. Hurricane season peaks August through October - Sandy pushed four feet of tide into Mill Brook in 2012, and Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020 put more than a hundred trees and limbs down across Valley Stream with barely a fifth of an inch of rain, just seventy-mile-an-hour gusts on a leafed-out canopy. Then nor'easters run October through April: the March 2018 pair took out tens of thousands of PSEG customers with wind alone.
The failure mode is predictable. Seventy-year-old Norway and silver maples with shallow roots in saturated sandy soil. Bradford pears splitting at the trunk. And the Halloween 2011 pattern nobody plans for: wet snow on trees that still have their leaves, which snaps limbs that would have shrugged off a January storm. If you have a big tree over the house and you have not had it looked at, a pre-season prune is the cheapest thing on this page.
What the job looks like
Emergency work is removal work with the order reversed: we make the dangerous part safe first, then take the rest down properly. A tree on a roof comes off in pieces with the weight controlled the whole way, because letting it roll does more damage than the storm did. A trunk across a driveway gets cut to get you out, then cleared. Hangers - limbs cracked and caught in the canopy, waiting for the next gust - come down before they choose their own time. Then chipping and haul-away, which after a storm is often the biggest part of the job.
The insurance math, honestly
Two things decide whether a claim is worth it. The tree has to have hit something covered - a structure, not the lawn - and the debris-removal line on most policies is capped around $500 per tree, well under what a big removal costs on Long Island. If a hurricane was declared, Nassau policies often carry a percentage hurricane deductible on top. So: a small limb on the lawn is an out-of-pocket job, no claim. A maple through the garage roof is a claim, and the photos you took in the first five minutes are what make it go smoothly. We write up the damage and the removal separately so the adjuster can read it.
About the trucks that show up after the storm
After every big blow, crews follow the weather into Nassau. Some are fine. The pattern to be careful with: no local address, no Nassau County license number, pressure to sign something in the driveway, and a price that somehow matches exactly what insurance will pay. Post-Sandy, homeowners here got bills north of ten thousand dollars for a single oak with the stump and debris left behind. Even in an emergency you can ask for a written, itemized number from someone who will answer the phone next spring.
Storm questions
Does homeowners insurance pay for the tree removal?
Usually only if the tree hit a covered structure - the house, garage, shed, or fence - and even then the debris-removal line is commonly capped around $500 per tree, which is less than a Long Island removal costs. A tree that just fell on the lawn is generally on you. Photograph everything before it moves either way.
My neighbor's tree fell on my garage. Who pays?
In New York, if the tree was healthy and a storm took it down, that is an act of God and your own policy covers your garage - the neighbor owes nothing. It only flips to the neighbor if they knew or should have known the tree was dead or dangerous. Dated photos of a visibly dead tree, sent to the owner in writing before it falls, are what makes that case.
How fast can you get here after a storm?
Trees on houses and wires first, driveways and access second, everything else after - and after a storm like Isaias, where a hundred-plus trees came down in Valley Stream alone, that queue is real and we tell you honestly where you are in it. Storm pricing is written like any other job: no after-storm markup games.
Tree down, hanging, or on something it should not be on? Call (516) 555-0100 and tell us which. Not an emergency, just a big tree you are worried about? Start with planned removal instead - it is cheaper in daylight.