Vent: Saw a homeowner butchering a 60-year-old oak in Charlotte last weekend

I was driving through a neighborhood near Plaza Midwood last weekend when I spotted a guy up in a massive oak with a chainsaw and no harness. Just standing on a branch with no tie-in, cutting limbs way bigger than his saw could handle. I pulled over and yelled up to him asking if he had any gear. He said he was just trimming some dead wood and didn't need all that fancy equipment. That tree is probably 60 feet tall with a 30 inch trunk. One wrong cut and that branch becomes a guillotine for him or his house. I watched for ten minutes and saw he was making flush cuts too, leaving no collar. That tree is gonna rot from those wounds within a few years if nobody fixes it. Has anyone else run into homeowners trying to DIY serious tree work and had to talk them down?

3 comments

3 Comments

nora_walker571mo ago

That bit about the flush cuts really got me because I used to think that was the right way to trim a tree. I honestly believed cutting it close to the trunk was cleaner and better for the tree. But after watching a certified arborist work on a maple in my own yard and explain how that collar is basically the tree's healing mechanism, I realized I was totally wrong. Seeing someone butcher a 60 year old oak like that makes me cringe now, knowing those cuts are basically an open invitation for rot and disease to take hold.

williams.jenny1mo ago

Holy cow, wait. Are you telling me that guy actually took out a transformer two blocks away from a bad tree trim? That's insane. I can barely wrap my head around that kind of chain reaction from a backyard job gone wrong. I've seen some messy tree work before but that's a whole new level of disaster. It just shows how one wrong cut or a bad angle can send everything flying in a way you never expect. That poor oak didn't stand a chance.

the_faith1mo ago

Got a chill reading this because @nora_walker57 is exactly right about flush cuts being a slow death sentence for an old tree. I watched my own neighbor try to trim a big elm last spring and he was using a dull saw and a ladder that wasn't even on level ground. The whole time I was just waiting for him to slip or for a branch to swing back and knock him off, but he kept yelling down that he knew what he was doing. Ended up taking out a power line transformer two blocks over when a limb landed wrong, so the whole street lost power for three hours. I swear some people think trees are just big weeds.