Storm-Damaged Trees & Fallen Limbs Across the Macarthur Region

In the first hour, before anyone touches a saw

A storm has been through and something has failed. Work in this order.

1. People first. If anyone is hurt or trapped, or a structure looks unstable, call 000.
2. Assume every wire is live. If a tree or limb is on powerlines, or has torn a service line off a house, stay away from it and keep others away — including from the wet ground around it. Report it to Endeavour Energy, which operates the distribution network across this part of south-west Sydney.
3. Tree on the roof or through a window? The NSW SES on 132 500 is the agency for storm and flood damage to buildings.
4. Street or reserve tree? That is Campbelltown City Council's asset. Report it to Council.
5. Photograph it. Wide shots, close shots, the failure point, the damage. Do it before anything is moved. Insurers and Council both work off evidence.
6. Then call a private crew for the removal, the hung-up timber and the clean-up.

We cannot promise a time on a storm day, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does — when a front comes across the Cumberland Plain, every crew in the corridor is already committed. What we can do is get your job in front of the local crews we work with quickly, with the detail they need to prioritise it properly.

Why trees fail the way they do out here

The Macarthur region has a fairly specific failure profile, and it comes down to soil, species and history.

The soil holds water, then lets go. Much of the Cumberland Plain sits on clay soils derived from Wianamatta Shale. Clay is slow to wet and slow to drain. After a sustained rain event the profile softens, the root plate loses grip, and a tree that has stood through thirty years of wind goes over in a moderate one. Whole-tree windthrow after heavy rain is the classic Macarthur failure.

The natives are strong but not immune. Forest red gum, grey box and narrow-leaved ironbark are the canopy species of Cumberland Plain Woodland, the critically endangered ecological community that once covered this district and now survives in remnants along the Georges River corridor, through Simmos Beach Reserve at Macquarie Fields, along Smiths Creek and out across the Scenic Hills. These are dense, heavy timbers. When a limb does let go, the energy involved is considerable. Spotted gum sheds bark and can drop large laterals in summer heat with no wind at all.

Isolated trees behave differently to forest trees. A gum that grew in a stand and was later left standing alone — on a cleared paddock that became an estate at Gregory Hills or Denham Court, or in a backyard at Rosemeadow — never developed the taper or the root spread for full exposure. Those are the ones that surprise people.

Old wounds decide where it breaks. Co-dominant stems with included bark, previous topping cuts from the 1980s, a bracket fungus at the base. A storm rarely creates a defect; it finds one.

Mature street plantings are at the age. The trees lining the established streets of Ingleburn, Minto, Leumeah, Glenfield, Bradbury and Airds went in when those suburbs were built. Many are now large, and a number are at the stage where structural assessment is worthwhile before the next big blow, not after it.

What a made-safe visit actually involves

Storm work is not ordinary removal done faster. It is loaded-timber work, and that changes the method.

• The hazard assessment comes first. A limb hung up in a canopy, a partly failed stem still attached by a hinge of fibre, a trunk under bending tension across a fence — each of these is storing energy and will move when it is cut. The order of cuts is the whole job.
• Make safe, then make tidy. The first priority is removing the immediate danger and getting access back — the driveway, the front door, the power meter. Full clean-up often follows as a second visit, and that is usually the sensible sequence rather than a sign of a job half done.
• The rest of the tree gets assessed. A tree that has lost a major limb is often now unbalanced, with a torn union and exposed heartwood. Sometimes the answer is tree pruning to rebalance it; sometimes it is full tree removal. That should be a considered call, not a panic one.
• Ground conditions limit the machinery. Saturated shale clay will not carry a chipper or a truck without leaving ruts across a lawn. After a wet week, some jobs have to be done by hand, and that shows up in the quote.
• The debris has to go somewhere. Storm volume is large. On-site chipping and mulching and green waste removal is how the site gets back to usable.

Emergency work and council approval

An important distinction. Campbelltown City Council regulates tree and vegetation removal on private land, and there are generally provisions dealing with trees that are dead, dying or presenting an immediate danger. Those provisions are not a blanket exemption, and they usually depend on being able to demonstrate the condition of the tree.

Practically: photograph the failure thoroughly, keep the evidence, and if a badly damaged but still-standing tree needs to come out afterwards, confirm the position with Council rather than assuming the storm removed the requirement. Nothing on this page is approval, and no contractor can guarantee, arrange or accelerate one.

After the clean-up

The useful thing to do once the mess is gone is to find out which of your remaining trees is next. An inspection while the storm season is still on the calendar is worth considerably more than one afterwards.

Storm callouts are arranged across every suburb we cover, and there is more about how this site works on the home page. We ask the crews we work with to carry public liability cover — ask to see the certificate, particularly on emergency work where it is easy to skip the paperwork.

Call (02) 4601 3387 with the location and what has come down, and we will get it in front of a local crew.