A tree came down on the house, the car, the fence, or across the driveway. Call now — the emergency line is answered around the clock, and our first job is making the situation safe.
Stay clear of downed trees near wires and treat every wire as live. Don't climb on a roof with a tree on it, and don't cut a tree that's under tension — spring-back injures people every storm season. Keep kids and pets inside until we've cleared the hazard.
When a tree opens a roof, the first job is stopping the water, not finishing the cleanup. Make-safe work means getting weight off the structure carefully — without causing the second round of damage a rushed job causes — then tarping the opening so the interior stays dry. Your homeowners policy expects this kind of mitigation, and the work is photographed and itemized for the claim. Once the property is safe and your adjuster has what they need, the full cleanup and debris haul-off get scheduled and finished.
Emergency pricing follows the same logic as everything else we quote — size, access, and what's underneath — with the after-hours reality on top: crews out at night, in weather, doing the slowest and most careful work in the trade. Getting a tree off a structure commonly runs from about $1,500 into the several-thousand range; a blocked driveway or a yard tree with no structure involved is usually less. You will get the price in writing before work beyond the immediate make-safe begins, and when a structure is damaged, the itemized invoice is written for your insurance claim — see what insurance typically covers.
Honesty cuts both ways: a tree fully down in an open yard, touching nothing, is not a 2 a.m. call — it's a scheduled removal, and scheduling it will cost you less. Limbs on the ground (not hanging), a fence panel down, a stump left from last year — all regular work. Call the emergency line when something is on a structure, blocking access, leaning on wires, or hanging over where people walk. Everything else, book the free estimate and save the premium.
Once the hazard is cleared, there's usually a second chapter: the stump, the damaged fence line, the other trees the storm exposed as weak. We leave you with a written list of what we saw — including the trees that worry us more than the one that fell — so the follow-up work is planned, not panicked. A lot of our pruning schedules start as a post-storm walk.
Keep it factual and early: when the tree fell, what it hit, whether the home is habitable, and what emergency work is underway. Take the claim number, and ask two specific questions — your tree-removal limit per event, and whether they want their own adjuster photos before cleanup proceeds beyond make-safe. Our insurance guide has the fuller picture, including the per-storm (not per-tree) limit that surprises people most.
Baltimore County gets it from both directions: nor'easters and tropical remnants soaking the soil until shallow-rooted pines and Bradford pears tip over whole, and summer thunderstorm microbursts snapping oaks and maples mid-crown. Saturated ground plus a full leaf canopy is the failure recipe — which is why pre-season pruning and removing known hazards early is so much cheaper than the 2 a.m. version.
Emergency work is priced by the situation, not the tree's size: a fallen tree in an open yard typically runs $450–$1,200; a tree or limb on a fence, shed, or car $1,200–$2,500; a tree on a house $1,500–$3,500 or more. After-hours calls add roughly 25–50%, and right after a big storm prices can run 30–50% higher while crews are backed up. The instant estimate has an emergency section that runs your situation.
Get people and pets out of the rooms under the tree. If a power line is involved, stay well clear and call 911. Then call us — the line is answered 24/7 — and, if it's safe, take photos of the damage for your insurance claim before anything is moved.
Often, yes — when the tree damaged a covered structure like your house or fence. Our insurance and storm-damage guide explains how the coverage usually works and what to document.
