Davey Tree Flipbooks

14 THE DAVEY BULLETIN | May/June 2021 MISSION TEXAS LANDSCAPE DEVASTATED BY HISTORIC WINTER STORM Historic snow and ice wreaked havoc on the trees, shrubs and flowers of Davey clients across Texas on Feb. 17 when a massive winter storm knocked out power and disrupted water service for millions across the Lone Star State. Tree limbs snapped under the weight of ice. Water lines froze and burst. Roads were unpassable due to heavy snowfall for days following the storm, which is blamed for the deaths of 111 people. Clients of Davey's Residential/Commercial (R/C) services, Commercial Landscape Services (CLS) and Utility services all relied on Davey to help their landscapes and infrastructure recover. NON-NATIVE SPECIES SUFFER "Impact wise, it's everywhere," said Brian Cox, district manager, Dallas R/C office. "Every client we have gone to see since Feb. 17 has dead shrubs and trees all over the place." Non-native species, of all plant varieties, suffered the most. "Palms are just devastated," Cox said. "One client had over 300 palms." Due to their physiology, palms were restricted from being climbed and could only be worked on in specific scenarios. "When palms freeze like this they turn to mush internally," said Dave Madden, district manager, South Austin R/C office. "Most of our native trees faired fairly well." "We really haven't had a freeze like this since 1989," Madden said. "Since then, people brought in a lot of non-indigenous plant species and experimented with them. We planted more palms again, a lot more Japanese blueberries, viburnums, even olive trees had been planted as ornamentals. A lot of them have taken it on the chin to the extent they're simply gone because of this storm." Aside from residential tree clients, commercial properties also sustained heavy damages. Katherine Leary, branch manager, Houston CLS territory, said every single one of her territory's clients suffered plant damage. "Some of our clients' landscapes were so dramatically affected by the freeze they had enough losses to warrant an insurance claim," Leary said. "A lot of our properties have tropical and semi-tropical plants. They flourish during warm months but have zero cold tolerance. It's been quite a wake-up call for a lot of people about what plants are, and are not, cold-hardy in our area." Freezing temperatures also damaged irrigation systems. "Even though we did our normal winter prep, many of our clients still had significant irrigation damage," she said. POWER COMPANIES PERSEVERE Davey Tree Surgery Company Utility services clients CenterPoint Energy and Austin Energy avoided severe damage to their power grids, unlike other Texas utilities. Brandon Freeman, area manager, Texas operations, said officials at CenterPoint energy did not need to call in additional support but did keep Davey crews on standby during the storm and for several days afterward before operations returned to normal. "All in all, I don't think we had maybe but a dozen storm-related jobs in those four days," Freeman said. "So, it wasn't really that big of an event on our side as far as working day to night, with hundreds of trees on lines. That just really didn't happen in Houston." In Austin, however, 15 Davey crews traveled to assist existing crews working for Austin Energy. "They were doing storm work early on," Freeman said.

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