UPDATE, 12/03 5:30 pst:
Thank all you so much for your caring help! We had a glitch with PayPal which we just got straightened out. The total we have now is $603.00. Every bit helps! Thank you, thank you, wonderful Kossack community! 🩷🩷🩷🩷
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I really hate to presume upon the generous Kos community yet again. But we have a situation we just have no resources to handle.
We have a 100-year-old farmhouse, with very old, huge oak trees on our property. Generous Kossacks bailed us out last year, when a huge branch from one of these trees fell on our granddaughter’s car, smashing her windshield and her car roof, while she was visiting with us. (She is so grateful for that emergency help here that day.) Yep, hazards like that from these 200-300 year-old oaks.
Burns Lass’s car smashed by our dropped oak limb
Subsequently, we had to take down three big trees, because they were leaning dangerously toward our neighbor’s house. We spent $13,500 in the past 18 months, to take care of these hazards. One huge oak threatened our house, and a very kind, generous Kossack promptly paid $3500 to help have it taken down for us. (Thank you!)
We went pale when we saw the inside of that tree: a big hole all the way down the trunk. Only the bark was holding it up.
After these expensive tree removals, our resources are tapped out. (We had soup and beans for Thanksgiving. No kidding.)
Only the bark was holding it up! 😳😬😱
Huge oak cut down just feet from our bedroom. Shook the house when it came down. 😳🫨
As y’all know, Hurricane Helene decimated our Blue Ridge area in late September. (I was terrified as those winds assailed our old house, making it howl and groan and squeal. Seriously! Me ‘n Teddy, our new kitten, burrowed under the covers in terror. Teddy had never experienced any big storm yet, in his 4 months of life. 💨⚡️🙀)
Being high up on a hill, we avoided the flash flooding occurring all around us below, even as our phones blared out constant, urgent flash-flood danger warnings. 😳😱 💨🌊🌪️
The next day, the neighbor appeared at our door to let us know that two big branches from our tree had taken out 10ft of her (crappy) fence. It cost us $1,000 to clean up that debris and other fallen branches all over our 1.7 acre yard. (TN law says she’s responsible to repair her fence, so we’ve ignored that.)
Branch that fell on fence from the tree, in Helene wind. Alive, not rotten.
Our tree dropped two big branches on neighbor’s fence during Helene high winds
But she also whined at us about that huge tree now leaning towards her house, since the storm. (This will be the 3rd one in two years). She subsequently consulted two tree-cutter companies, to assess the hazard of that tree (evidently trespassing on our property to have it inspected and photographed). Both cutters said the tree is dangerous.
Our leaning tree, with Autumn leaves
Neighbor is demanding we take the tree down. When we suggest she pay for half the expense, she runs away squealing. The tree is still healthy, not dead, but now leaning due to the recent hurricane winds.
If the tree falls, it could be a danger. If it falls on her house and harms her, we will likely lose everything, including our house. (Negligent homicide?) Tennessee law says if we “knew or should’ve known” about the tree hazard, we’re responsible. Otherwise, a healthy tree falling is an “act of God.” No fault. We have photos of the tree fully leafed out, despite the lean. Not dead or decayed.
We don’t know what to do. Every time we have strong wind gusts now, it’s a tense, white-knuckled time. Praying the tree doesn’t fall.
We have no resources to help ourselves with this situation. Since the neighbor can show that two experts have advised her the tree is a hazard, if it now falls on her house, our insurance likely won’t cover it. TN law. We “knew or should have known.”
We’ve had two (discreet) bids from those experts, for the takedown, of $5000 and $5500, respectively. We don’t know what to do. With climate changes evidencing new, not-normal weather events here in our mountain area, we don’t know when or how the leaning tree will finally give it up. Seeing the hundreds of thousands of trees that came down in Helene is not reassuring. Huge fallen-oak root systems luridly displayed in the aftermath. 😰🫣
After years of Long-Covid (that we’re finally climbing out of), we elderly just can’t sustain this level of added stress. But we’re like deer-in-the-headlights with this suddenly incurred situation. 😳🦌
We have been researching and inquiring about local home-safety grants to help us with this threat to our security. But the feedback is that the tree needs to have fallen, or is threatening our house, for us to be eligible for the cash grant. Also, since the hurricane, the backlog of applications has overwhelmed the State funds available.
Any help for us to just preemptively eliminate this nerve-wracking hazard will be so deeply appreciated. If we don’t address it soon, we may pay a devastating price.
Thank you for reading our S.O.S. 😕🙏🏽🧡
Sockpuppet and Otteray Scribe
xoxoxoxoxo
PayPal.Me/otterayscribe