Category: Storm & Hurricane Prep

The day after a storm is the worst time to make decisions and the most common time to make them. Crews are knocking on doors, neighbors are comparing quotes across fences, and the tree across the driveway is the only thing anyone can think about.

Most of the expensive mistakes people make after a South Florida storm happen in that first forty-eight hours. Here is a working order for what to do, what to leave alone, and what to be careful of.

First: Assume Every Downed Line Is Live

Nothing on a property is worth approaching a downed conductor for. Power lines do not have to arc or spark to be energized, and a limb resting on a line will carry current into whatever it is touching, including a fence or a wet lawn.

Report it to the utility and stay clear. No tree company should be cutting anything in contact with a service line before the utility has cleared it — if one offers, that tells you what you need to know about them.

Photograph Everything Before You Move It

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that costs the most.

Before any cutting or dragging, take photographs from several angles: the tree or limb where it fell, what it landed on, and the wider context showing the property. Include something for scale. If a limb went through a screen enclosure or a roof, photograph it in place, then again from inside if it is safe to do so.

Once a crew has cut and hauled, the evidence is gone. Policies and claim requirements vary, and what your insurer will and will not cover is a question for your insurer — but no policy is helped by an undocumented pile of mulch. Keep receipts and written scopes of work for the same reason.

Triage: Urgent, Soon, and Later

Urgent — anything blocking access to the property, anything resting on a structure, and anything still suspended in a canopy. A limb caught in the branches above a walkway is the most dangerous thing on most properties after a storm, and it is the least likely to be noticed.

Soon — leaning trees with lifted root plates, split trunks, large tears where limbs pulled away, and blocked canals or drainage easements. None of these are emergencies on a clear day, but the next rain changes that.

Later — general debris, cosmetic damage, replanting, and the structural pruning that will keep the same limbs from failing next season.

The Hangers Are the Real Hazard

Once the wind stops, attention goes to what is on the ground. The material that injures people is usually still overhead.

Broken limbs lodged in a canopy can sit for weeks and come down without warning, often on a still day. They are difficult to spot from directly underneath, which is exactly where people stand to look. Walk the property from a distance and look up into the canopies against the sky. If you see anything broken, hanging, or resting at an angle it should not be, keep people out from under it until it is removed.

A Leaning Tree Is Not Automatically a Dead Tree

Trees that lean after a storm fall into two groups. If the root plate has lifted — if you can see soil heaved on one side, or the trunk moves when the wind picks up — the anchorage is compromised and the tree usually has to come out — along with the stump it leaves behind.

A tree that is simply leaning, with the root plate intact and no cracking at the base, can often be assessed and kept. Palms in particular will straighten on their own over months.

The mistake is deciding either way in the first two days. Unless it is threatening a structure, a leaning tree can usually wait for a proper look.

Debris and Municipal Pickup

Most South Florida municipalities run storm debris collection after a declared event, with rules about separation and placement that differ by city and change from storm to storm. Vegetative debris generally has to be kept apart from construction material and household items, and piles cannot block sidewalks, drains or hydrants.

Two practical points. Storm debris pickup can take weeks in a bad season, so a pile at the curb is a long-term feature rather than a temporary one. And material stacked near a storm drain will find its way into it, which turns a yard problem into a flooding problem for the street.

If you need it gone rather than collected, it has to be cut, chipped and hauled.

Canals and Drainage Come First on Commercial Sites

For HOAs and commercial properties, the priority order is different from a residential lot. Blocked channels and clogged drainage easements affect every resident, not one, and they are what turns the next rainfall into standing water and complaints.

Clearing storm material out of canals and waterways usually matters more in the first week than tidying the common areas, even though the common areas are what people see.

Be Careful Who You Hire

Storms bring crews into South Florida from out of the area, and the pattern is consistent: door-to-door solicitation, cash up front, no written scope, no local address, and a truck with no lettering or lettering that does not match the paperwork.

Before anyone cuts anything, confirm the basics. Ask for the license and proof of liability insurance, and ask for a certificate naming you. Get the scope in writing, including whether hauling is included. Do not pay in full in advance. If a crew is pressuring you to sign immediately because they are "in the neighborhood today," that pressure is the product.

An uninsured crew injured on your property becomes your problem, and that is a far larger exposure than the tree.

Then Deal With Next Season

Once the urgent work is done, the useful question is which trees failed and why. Storms are an unusually honest assessment of a property — the limbs that came down are generally the ones that were already dead, poorly attached, or carrying too much sail. Addressing that in the winter is what makes the next storm quieter — see when to trim trees before hurricane season for the timing.

Marciano Landscaping provides storm response, tree trimming and removal, stump grinding and debris hauling across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County. Call (786) 560-1827.

Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the busiest stretch for South Florida falls between mid-August and late October. If you are reading this in the middle of that window and your trees have not been touched since last year, you are not too late — but the work you do now is different from the work you would have done in May.

Here is how tree trimming actually reduces storm risk, when it should happen, and what to do if a storm is already being tracked.

The Goal Is Wind Passing Through, Not a Shorter Tree

The most common misunderstanding about storm trimming is that a smaller tree is a safer tree. It is not. What makes a tree dangerous in high wind is a dense, sail-like canopy that catches wind instead of letting it through, combined with dead or weakly attached limbs that break away.

Proper hurricane preparation thins the canopy so air moves through it. A correctly thinned tree looks largely the same from the street — same height, same shape — but light reaches the ground through it and the branch structure is visibly cleaner.

Why Topping Makes Trees More Dangerous

Every year in South Florida, crews go door to door before a storm offering to cut trees down to stubs. This practice, called topping or hat-racking, is one of the worst things you can do to a mature tree.

Cutting a tree back to bare limbs forces it to push out fast, weak regrowth from the cut points. Those new shoots are attached to the outside of the old wood rather than anchored in it. Within two or three seasons you have a tree that is denser than before and covered in branches that snap off easily — the exact opposite of what you wanted. Many South Florida municipalities also restrict or prohibit the practice, and it can reduce the value of a mature specimen permanently.

If a company quotes you a very low price to "cut it way back before the storm," that is usually what you are buying.

The Trees That Cause the Most Damage Here

Not every tree presents the same risk. In Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, the recurring problems are:

• Ficus — fast growing, heavy, shallow rooted, and prone to going over whole in saturated soil.
• Black olive and mahogany — dense canopies that catch wind badly when they have not been thinned.
• Australian pine and melaleuca — brittle invasives that shed large limbs and often sit along canal banks and property lines.
• Coconut and royal palms — the trunk usually survives, but dead fronds and seed pods become projectiles.
• Anything leaning over a roof, pool cage or seawall — regardless of species, that is where damage gets expensive.

The Right Timing

The ideal window for storm preparation is late winter through May, before the season opens. Trees have time to seal their cuts and settle before the first serious wind, and crews are not booked solid.

Mid-season trimming is still worthwhile, particularly for removing deadwood, clearing limbs off structures and taking down obviously compromised trees. What we avoid in August and September is heavy structural pruning — a tree that has just had a large amount of live growth removed is stressed, and stress is not what you want going into a storm.

The one thing that is always worth doing, at any point in the season, is removing what is already dead. Deadwood does not become safer by waiting.

When a Storm Is Already Being Tracked

Once a named system is in the forecast cone, the calculation changes. Crews book out within a day or two, and debris left at the curb becomes a hazard in itself — municipal pickup stops well before landfall, and loose piles turn into airborne material.

At that stage, focus on what can be done and cleared quickly: dead fronds, hanging limbs, anything already broken, and loose yard material. Save the larger structural work for after the season.

Palms Need Different Attention

Palms handle wind better than most broadleaf trees, and a healthy palm will usually bend and recover. The hazard is what it is carrying. Dead fronds and heavy seed pods come loose at speed, and coconuts in particular do real damage to windows, screens and vehicles.

Cleaning a palm before the season is quick work. Over-stripping it is not helpful — removing green fronds weakens the palm and offers no storm benefit. Take the dead material and the pods, leave the living crown alone.

After the Storm

Post-storm work is its own job, and we have covered it separately in what to do after a storm: downed trees across driveways and fences, hangers left in canopies, blocked canals and drainage easements, and debris that has to be cut, chipped and hauled. Document damage with photographs before anything is moved if you intend to file an insurance claim.

We handle storm response across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County, including commercial properties and HOAs that need multiple sites cleared quickly.

Book Before the Season, Not During It

The properties that come through storms well are almost always the ones trimmed on a schedule rather than in a panic. If your trees have not been assessed this year, it is worth having someone look at them now — even if the recommendation is to wait until winter for the heavy work.

Marciano Landscaping provides tree trimming and removal throughout South Florida. Call (786) 560-1827 for an assessment.