# Prepping / Emergency Preparedness > General Emergency Preparedness >  It Pays Off

## crashdive123

One of the things that I have done over the years is to keep the trees around the house trimmed.  Living in Florida there is the threat of hurricanes, but also severe thunderstorms that happen on a fairly regular basis.  About every four years we have some large maple trees topped.  I'm also pretty vigilant about cutting large limbs back before they become a threat.  For the last several days we have been having some pretty fierce thunderstorms with high winds.  This afternoon a lightning strike split a large tree.  The section that came off fell into a large branch from another tree.  Our estimates and trimming paid off.  Several feet to spare from hitting a structure.

Guess I'll be cutting wood tomorrow.

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## Rick

When we moved into this house in 1990, the previous owner had planted a maple tree in the back about 15 feet from the house. Another in the front about that distance from the corner of the garage. both still fairly small trees. Soft woods, high winds and structures don't do well together. Despite my wife's objections (and they were many) both came down just for the reason you pointed out.

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## Ole WV Coot

I came home from work after a few days storm work, wife was at her Moms. Walked into the shed, basement door, upstairs and opened the back door. It took the ole saw/20" bar to get out on the deck and 4 hrs to uncover it. Now I may have one or two that could come close. I learned the hard way as usual.

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## bulrush

I just removed an old maple tree infested with carpenter ants from my property near my house. I call it insurance. It was just waiting for a high wind to tip it over.

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## crashdive123

Well, I've got the tree that was struck and the one it hit down and cut into bite sized pieces.  Next task is the neighbors yard.  There are about 6 that need trimming/removal.  With all of the afternoon thunderstorms I only get about two hours after I finish my regular job before the storms roll in.

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## RobertRogers

Imagine during a hurricane a large tree smashing half your house flat!

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## crashdive123

> Imagine during a hurricane a large tree smashing half your house flat!


Exactly.  That's why I started this thread - see 1st post.

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## Arborius

Hows the water table doing in Florida I know last fall they had a water shortage and I was wondering if levels were back up to normal yet. I know WV certainly has plenty of water.

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## crashdive123

I haven't seen any data (or looked for any) on water table levels.  We've been getting quite a bit of rain in various parts of the state.  My guess would be that they have risen because the local news readers don't talk about it nightly.

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## trax

I had to go to a meeting with some community leaders at the town's school division office at the start of the week. There was a huge cottonwood that a windstorm had dropped, laying right across the entrance to the buidling. We all had to kind of wiggle our way around it just to get in. They're lucky it fell the direction that it did and luckier still that there wasn't someone out there.

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