A Tree Fell on My House.
What Do I Do Right Now?

Get everyone out, and stay out

Leave the house, including pets, and do not go back in for belongings. A tree resting on a roof is still moving. Rafters that held through the impact can let go an hour later, and water coming through the ceiling makes drywall heavy and unpredictable. Wait outside, or at a neighbor's.

Treat every wire as live

A downed line can be energised without sparking or humming, and a wet tree or a puddle will carry that current well past where you would expect. Stay at least 35 feet back, further if the ground is wet, and keep children and animals away from the whole area, not just the wire.

Call your electric utility to report it; the number is on your bill. If the line is across a road or anyone could walk into it, call 911 as well. No tree company should touch a tree in contact with a line until the utility has cleared it, including us. If someone offers to, that is a reason to send them away.

Do not cut anything

This is the one that puts people in the hospital. A fallen tree is not lying there passively. It is a loaded spring. Trunks under bending load, limbs pinned against a roof, and root plates half out of the ground all hold stored energy, and a chainsaw releases it in a direction you cannot predict from the ground.

There is also a good chance the tree is the only thing holding the roof where it is. Cutting it can drop the structure further and turn a repairable roof into a rebuilt one. Leave it exactly as it is until someone with rigging can take the weight off in a controlled way.

Photograph everything before anything moves

Your phone is the most valuable tool you have right now. Once a crew starts cutting, the evidence of what happened is gone, and the adjuster is working from whatever you captured.

• Wide shots from several angles showing the whole tree and the whole house
• Close-ups of the impact point, the roofline, and any interior damage you can photograph safely from a doorway
• The base of the tree and the root plate, which shows whether it uprooted or snapped
• Anything else it hit: vehicles, fence, outbuildings, the neighbor's property
• A short video walking the property, narrating what you are seeing

Take far more than you think you need. Nobody has ever regretted having too many photos at claim time.

Open the claim, and write down the number

Call your insurer before you call anyone else for work. Ask three things: your claim number, whether emergency mitigation is covered before the adjuster arrives, and whether they need you to use a particular contractor. Write the claim number somewhere you will not lose it. Every later conversation starts with it.

After a named storm the phone queues get long, so start this early, even while you are still standing in the yard. More on how coverage usually works in our guide to storm damage and insurance in Craven County.

Stop the water, but only if it is safe

Most policies expect you to prevent further damage once the immediate danger has passed: tarping an opening, moving furniture out from under a leak, putting buckets down. Keep the receipts for anything you buy; that spend is usually part of the claim.

What this does not mean is climbing onto a damaged roof with a tarp. If it needs a ladder, it needs someone else. Nobody's insurance covers a homeowner falling off their own house.

Call a tree service that can actually lift it off

Taking a tree off a structure is not the same job as taking one out of a yard. The weight has to come off in pieces, in an order that does not load the roof further, usually with rigging and sometimes with a crane. Ask whoever you call whether they have done it before, and ask for a certificate of insurance. A real company will send one without being pushed.