Downed trees might stay for months

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By Doug Schorpp | Thursday, July 24, 2008 |

Josh Martinez from Kewanee, an employee with Hyme's Tree Service, uses a bucket truck to trim a white oak in the yard of Joe and Sharon DeClercq of East Moline after it fell over due to Monday's storm. (John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

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Crews clear a downed tree from an East Moline couple's yard.…
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They’re taking the most desperate situations first.

After that, Hyme’s Tree Service of the Quad-Cities will begin cutting up and removing trees from yards, sidewalks and driveways.

But for many, it could be weeks and maybe months before they get their fallen trees removed.

“We have 10 employees working right now, and we are averaging over 100 calls a day,” said Angie Solis, who owns the business with her husband, Hyme Solis.

“This week, we are prioritizing by trees on houses. We are only handling trees on houses or trees in houses. From there, we go to other trees that have fallen. But that is going to be weeks.”

She is not alone after Monday’s damaging storm ripped its way through the Quad-Cities and surrounding areas. Thousands of trees were taken down or uprooted.

“We are way behind,” said Corey Armetta, owner of Armetta Tree Service in Rock Island. “We are really booked up. A lot of them, we won’t be able to get to for awhile. We will be really busy the next two months, steady work after that, and into the winter. There will be work here for a long time to come.”

In fact, he said it could be six months before he gets all his work done related to this storm.

Debbie Louck, officer manager at Davey Tree Expert Co., Bettendorf, said the business — part of a nationwide company — has received hundreds of calls from Quad-City residents seeking relief from fallen trees that damaged homes, cars, garages and more.

“On Monday, we got over

360 calls,” he said Wednesday. “We got well over 150 yesterday. And today, the phone is ringing as much as yesterday, so it’s been real busy. We had to bring in four crews from the Chicago offices.”

She said two Chicago crews went Wednesday to Deere World Headquarters in Moline, where many trees fell on the property. “They got hammered there. It will take at least a week to clean up John Deere,” she said.

Louck said several people have been in Rock Island all week just trying to do estimates for customers. “They are so busy,” she said.

How busy is she? Louck makes up the entire one-person office staff under normal circumstances. This week, she called in her district manager’s mother to help. Then, she called in her own mother to help.

When the four Chicago area crews came to town, she sought her father to drive the pilot car because they don’t know the area. She even had a nephew, who used to work at Davey, volunteer to spend part of his vacation helping out this week.

“Most of the stuff is coming from Rock Island, which had the most damage, then Moline and Milan,” Louck said of the customer calls. “There are trees in their houses, in living rooms, bedrooms. Some people are crying. We are trying to be as compassionate as possible.”

Solis said even before Monday’s storm, their crews were busy.

“We were three to four weeks out,” she said. “One storm could put you back six weeks. It’s going to take us three to four weeks to get things cleaned up. Our goal is to get trees off houses, off driveways, and then come back two weeks later and clean up the mess.”

Doug Schorpp can be contacted

at (563) 383-2292

or dschorpp@qctimes.com.