COLUMBIA, S.C. — Many residents around the Midlands are still dealing with the aftermaths of Tropical Storm Helene. As the high winds took down trees, it left many neighbors with storm damage. Here's what you should do to if you’re dealing with down trees or limbs on your property.
“Of course every tree company is slammed busy. We removed between 18 to 22 trees off of homes or different homes, some some homes have multiple trees on them. That's been since Friday night, and we'll be doing this at least for another week before we start getting on the hazardous trees,” Mike Rollins, owner of Mike's Tree Service, said.
Local tree service companies like Mike’s Tree Service have been working around the clock to remove trees from neighbors homes, after Tropical Storm Helene made its way through the Midlands.
“The first thing you would do is get the tree off the home and then handle the insurance later, to mitigate all the damages and make sure that the area is safe. A lot of people think a tree is fine when it's just laying on a home, but I've seen them on homes for two or three days and then shift and then come crashing all the way through. If a tree falls on your home, the best thing to do is get it off as fast as possible,” Rollins said.
Insurance agents like Craig Plank say it's important to know what you're responsible for when it comes to tree damage.
“It doesn’t really matter where the tree started, it's where it ends up and lands is where the insurance would take care of it. For example, if your neighbor's tree falls on your property, on your premises, on your roof, it's going to be your insurance that will take care of the roof damage, the tree removal. There are some exceptions that the tree were dead and it had been dead for a while. There may be some liability on the part of the neighbor, but generally it's going to fall on your property,” Plank said.
Plank recommends checking in with your insurance agent periodically, he says it's important not to wait until a major storm to know what your insurance covers.
“Most commonly, people don't know what their deductible is, and on that point, I think it's important that small claims you may want to consider not reporting. If it falls below your deductible, it is, in fact, a claim, but it may not be payable, and nowadays, the way insurance carriers will use the frequency of losses as something that might indicate future losses and could cause some issues with the policy itself, my recommendation is take care of the small stuff yourself and then the catastrophic, the things that exceed your deductible, make sure you report,” he said.
Insurance agents say flooding damage typically isn’t covered under the standard homeowners policy, they recommend assessing what damages your area had throughout the storm and consider getting flood insurance.