Davey Tree Flipbooks

13 March/April 2026 | THE DAVEY BULLETIN EASTERN UTILITY COMPLETES TOUGH WORK IN WINTER STORM Fifty Eastern Utility services employees battled bitter cold and plenty of snow while assisting FirstEnergy as a snowstorm hit Ohio the week of New Year's Eve in 2025. When arriving on a job site in the Akron, Ohio, area, Brandon Smith encountered a large maple tree on fire after it fell on power lines. He and his crew waited until they were told it was safe to work. Once they were safe to begin their tasks, they cleared away the tree and a few others that fell onto secondary wires. They also pruned a few other trees to make sure limbs were away from wires to prevent outages because of wind and weather conditions. "I always feel a sense of accomplish- ment when working on storms and knowing I'm helping people get their lives back together after a tragic event," Smith, foreman, Carroll account, Eastern Utility, said. "There is always the sense of urgency when working the jobs because of just knowing other people are struggling without power." Justin Hanke, who also worked around Akron and Kent, Ohio, said A tree lies on a residential road around Akron, Ohio, following a snowstorm carrying heavy winds and cold conditions in late December 2025. An emergency response call came in to the Davey crew on the PG&E Los Padres account on Christmas Day after a winter storm ran through California. A Monterey pine tree had fallen on another tree and been pushed by the wind onto a houses' deck and roof, ultimately ending up overhanging powerlines. One of the limbs had even hooked itself onto the house's chimney. To fix this near-catastrophic situation, the four-person crew established multiple tag lines and mechanical advantage in adjacent trees to stabilize the broken pine, climbed an adjacent tree to attach rigging for additional lift, used a pole saw to remove sections of the pine until the tree was no longer a hazard and coordinated with a local division crew to de-energize, isolate and ground the power lines, among many other actions. "Before we started our plan, I knew it was going to work — but to see all of us come together and our plan go the way we wanted to go was awesome," Ivan Bravo, foreman, PG&E Los Padres account, Surgery Company, said. "A lot WINTER STORM DAMAGE NO MATCH FOR SURGERY CREW of our crew gets assigned to storm work, and this kind of work plays a big role in our jobs. I am really proud of what we were able to do and proud of us for assisting the community to the best of our ability." he and his team removed a large tree that had fallen in the middle of a residential street. After securing traffic, he and his team worked to remove the tree while striving to keep everyone safe through strong communication and proper technique since it was late at night. They cleared all debris from the road so local utility crews could then move their truck down the road and begin to restore power. "I'm proud to wear the Davey logo," Hanke, foreman, AES account, Eastern Utility, said. "Everybody went home safe, and we were able clear the road for the homeowners. Going through the great trainings Davey offers, like Factors and Forces, gave me the knowledge I needed in a situation like this, and programs like that make us all stronger." A Surgery Company crew on the PG&E Los Padres account works to lower a large Monterey pine tree that sits on a resident's roof and deck following a winter storm in Cambria, California. The crew included Ivan Bravo, foreman; Erasmo Guzman, foreman; Julian Maldonado, general foreman; and Casiano Vivar, climber.

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