Emergency Storm Tree Service in Des Moines, IA

Emergency storm tree service in Des Moines covers the work nobody plans for: a maple split down the middle and lying across the garage, a limb hanging by a strip of bark over the back door, a spruce blown over onto the driveway. Central Iowa sees roughly fifty thunderstorm days in a typical year, and the state averaged 47 tornadoes a year over a thirty-year span. Most storm calls follow straight-line wind, though heavy wet snow and ice add their own share in winter.

Safety before anything else

If a tree is touching a power line, assume the line is live and keep everyone, including pets, well away. Report it to MidAmerican Energy, the utility serving Des Moines, on its tree emergency line, 800-799-4443, and do not try to free the tree yourself. If a tree has come through the roof, leave that part of the house. Once people are safe, take photos of the damage from several angles before anything is moved; your insurer will want them.

What we do first

Storm work is sorted by danger, not by size. A tree resting on a roof, a limb hung up in the canopy above a walkway, a trunk cracked at the base and leaning toward the house: those come first. Weight on a roof is taken off in controlled pieces so the structure isn't stressed further; sometimes a crane is the safest way to lift a heavy trunk off a house without dropping it. Once the immediate hazard is gone, we can tarp or help you arrange cover for the opening and come back to finish the cleanup.

The derecho showed what's at stake

On August 10, 2020, a derecho crossed central Iowa with gusts approaching 120 mph, knocking out power to more than 132,000 MidAmerican customers in the Des Moines metro. The city said debris cleanup could take up to six weeks. In a widespread event like that, every tree company in the region is booked solid, and the trees that hurt people and houses tend to be ones that already had dead tops, cracked unions or decay. Pruning and assessing those trees before storm season is cheaper and calmer than an emergency call.

Cracked but standing

Not every storm-damaged tree must come down. A tree that lost a few limbs but kept a sound trunk and most of its crown can often be pruned back to healthy wood and left to recover. A tree with a split main fork, a lifted root plate or a broken top usually can't. We will tell you which you have.