Madison forestry crews still responding to more than 1,000 calls of downed trees (2024)

The power lines may be back up, the downed trees are no longer blocking roads. But more than a week after powerful storms rocked southern Wisconsin, crews from Madison’s Streets and Urban Forestry Division are still putting in long days to pick up the pieces from the storm.

Since May 21, when the storms rolled through, the division has received more than 1,000 calls from residents reporting downed trees, and more are still flooding in, City forester Ian Brown said. On Saturday alone, the department responded to over 270 reports.

“I think for this (storm), we’re working at least into next week before we start returning to normal operations,” Brown said. “That would be an optimistic estimate. Our staff this week are continuing to work 12-hour shifts.”

In addition to reports from residents, forestry crews surveyed damage the night of the storms, building a rough estimate of how much work would be needed to get the streets cleaned. Most of the calls came from west of the Isthmus, he said.

With about 30 field staff, the forestry division usually has enough people on hand to manage the city’s estimated 100,000 trees and address regular cleanups. But when a widespread event like last week’s storm hits, Brown said, there’s only so much crews can do.

“Picking up the phone, you would miss three additional calls in the process of just holding a verbal conversation,” Brown said. “So at that point, we have to be really efficient with how we actually delegate our staff and assign them in the field, because we have so few resources.”

Downed power lines have also slowed tree cleanup. Immediately after the storm, Madison Gas and Electric announced 46,000 customers were without power — the largest outage since 1976, which Brown said delayed some of the work.

“We did have a lot of trees and branches that were in wires, and so that contributed to our response times as well,” Brown said.

“Our staff are trained to work in proximity to wires, not to work in direct contact with wires. MGE was up to their eyeballs in work ... but we as Forestry could not respond to some situations until they had their crews come and make the situation safe.”

Brown said he expects crews to have addressed most reports by the end of next week, and asked that residents only report a downed tree once to free up the forestry division’s phone lines.

“In a circ*mstance that we’re actively managing a storm response, having someone reach out to confirm that we received a call or to follow up on one that they already submitted is actually a hindrance to our operation,” he said. “If you’ve submitted it, especially online, we got it. We will follow up in priority order.”

Triage has been the focus of the cleanup process so far. When deciding which reports are the most important, crews look at whether a tree is blocking a street or lying on a home, and then sweep “systematically through neighborhoods,” Brown said. “We’re trying to go in a systematic process so that we minimize our trip travel time and maximize our efficiency.”

Mostly healthy trees fell

When a tree is first planted, crews inspect it once about every four or five years until it matures, “like training a puppy,” he said.

Once a tree is mature, crews regularly inspect and prune it about once every 10 years. That includes removing dead branches, identifying rot, checking for split trunks and removing an unhealthy tree when needed. The process is intended to prevent more trees from falling when a major storm hits.

This year’s particularly wet spring could have contributed to the number of trees damaged, with soft soil making it easier for the storm’s 62-mph winds to knock down even healthy trees. In fact, he said, most of the downed trees did not show signs of rot or instability.

Brown said he hopes to see tree cleanup finished by the end of next week, while the city aims to have brush entirely cleared from residents’ yards, terraces and sidewalks by June 14.