24/7 Emergency Tree & Storm Service in Birmingham, AL

If a tree has fallen on your house, your car or across your driveway, call RJ Tree Service at (205) 871-3617 – day or night. RJ Tree Service was started on October 4, 1995, the day Hurricane Opal tore through the Birmingham area, and storm work is still what we drop everything for. We make it safe first, then clean up.

1. Get everyone out of the damaged part of the house. A tree on a roof can shift.
2. Stay away from wires. If a line is down or tangled in the tree, treat it as live and call Alabama Power. Don’t touch the tree.
3. Take photos from several angles before anything is moved – your insurance company will want them.
4. Call us at (205) 871-3617. Tell us what is under the tree and whether there is a hole in the roof.
5. Call your insurance company to open a claim.

When a tornado hit their neighborhood, one family wrote that Wesley came first thing in the morning, made sure the hole in the house was covered, and made sure they could get out of the driveway – then cleared the rest. That is the order we work in:

• take the weight of the tree off the house carefully, so it doesn’t do more damage coming off,
• cover the opening in the roof with a tarp until the roofer comes,
• open the driveway and the way into the house,
• cut up and haul away the rest, and clean the yard.

Big trees on a house often come off with a crane – it lifts the trunk straight up instead of dragging it across the roof.

Central Alabama gets severe weather twice a year: in spring, roughly March through May, and again in late fall. The storms that bring down the most trees are not always the tornadoes – long soaking rains that turn red clay to mush, followed by strong wind, will push over big healthy oaks with the whole root plate. Remnants of Gulf hurricanes do the same, as Opal did in 1995.

The best storm prep is done in calm weather: dead trees removed, heavy limbs over the house thinned or reduced. If a tree has been worrying you, have it looked at before the season starts.