Arborist offers tips to keep your home safe from falling trees

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - The storms that have rolled through Kansas City have knocked down a fair share of trees this year, an arborist with Urban Forestry confirmed they have taken between three and more times the amount of emergency calls this year compared to last year.

Jericho Harris is an arborist and owns Urban Forestry. He advises homeowners be on the lookout for three things; first, how close is the tree to valuable property like a home or driveway where cars may sit. Second, looking for signs of infestation or fungus – both can cause rot to a tree. Third, how many dead branches with wilted leaves are on the tree because they are at higher risk of falling with high winds.

“If you’re getting a lot of limbs dropping, even small limbs can be a telltale,” Harris said. “Whenever we look at tree failure, mostly we’re looking at decay of some sort in the canopy or down low on the root system – total tree failure is likely to destroy a home or vehicles, anything nearby.”

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Some arborists like Urban Forestry do free consultations for homeowners on what it will take to get a tree stabilized or what it will take to remove the tree.

Harris has a special device that can perform tomography scans on trees, which is like an x-ray done on humans that can help evaluate a tree.

“We have the empirical data to scan the tree to find the culprit, whether it’s root decay, or trunk decay, or if it’s in the canopy, and we can give you data and empirical information to tell you and calculate the risk of your tree near your house,” Harris said.

The emerald ash borer, which has plagued parts of Kansas City is beginning to wane in the area, according to Harris.

They attack trees by burrowing past the bark into the cambium and end up eating it, and then laying their larvae inside the tree. That larvae then hatches and continue to eat the tree.

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“That’s mostly just due to the amount of trees that have been affected in the past no longer being affected,” Harris said.

If a tree is affected by the emerald ash borer Harris said the treatment is affordable, but it does depend on the size of the tree.

“We do a probe into the trunk of the tree, we inject it with a pesticide,” Harris said. “When we do that it gives you about a three year margin before you’d have to reinject that tree and give it another round of pesticide.”