Tree Damage

9/5/2019 (Permalink)

The photo shows the tree that fallen onto the lake cabin home.

SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County was called out to a property by an insurance adjuster. This insurance adjuster received a call from his insured stating that a large tree fell on their lake cabin. This adjuster asked SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County to go out and assess the damage and figure out what needs to be done. When SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County arrived, the crew saw a large tree had fell onto the house. The tree fell through the roof breaking the shingles and the roof decking then also went through the second story floor and into the main level kitchen and living room.   This tree is an estimated 2 to 3 tons of weight resting on the house, making it a very unsafe structure to be inside of. 

It was quickly determined that an emergency board of could not be done on the structure due to the size of the tree in the instability of the cabin. During the initial assessment of the property, SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County, the homeowner and the adjuster had indicated that this most likely was going to be a total loss and should be escalated to a large loss claim, which it was. SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County began working with the large loss property adjuster and recommended that a structural engineer be brought in to assess the structural stability of this building. 

While waiting for an engineering firm, arrangements tried to be made with a tree removal vendor to remove the tree. Due to the location of this cabin on the hill that was built next to, there was no way for a large enough crane to access this home in order to lift the tree off of the home. Therefore, a carpenter was hired to build a temporary structure underneath the tree to support the weight so then the tree could be cut in sections and removing the weight from the cabin.   After waiting approximately two weeks for this temporary structure to be built and the tree removed, SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County came back to the cabin to do a full content pack-out. 

Now that the tree challenge was met, the next challenge was to figure out how to get all of the contents out of the cabin and up the steep hill, which had approximately 55 stairs. SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County’s main concern is how to safely and effectively load up vehicles to haul away the contents.   The idea was presented to utilize an ATV pulling a wagon and utilize the ATV to go up this hill with the contents. The incline of this hill was more than 45° degrees which made this quite a challenge. SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County is willing to do most anything to help our customers. After a couple test runs going up and down the hill in determining that the ATV was powerful enough to make it up the hill with contents, the first load of boxes were moved up the hill.  SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County was pleased to see that this idea worked perfectly. This process continued until all contents were moved up the hill. Utilizing the ATV, SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County was able to not only move boxes and other contents but also move the refrigerator, stove, washer, dryer, and two mattresses. 

 It would have taken approximately two full days with six technicians to box up and haul all of these content by hand. This would’ve caused possible injury but obviously a lot of physical strength and exertion. Because SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha had the idea of using the ATV we had this pack-out accomplished in six hours.   

SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County is often met with challenges that take some creativity in order to solve it. But in every instance, we somehow figure out a solution. That is what teamwork is all about and that is how SERVPRO of Southwest Waukesha County likes to get projects accomplished.