A Tree Comes Off The Roof

Storms like Sandy cause a boom time for tree service companies. For East Greenwich Tree Service, there's been lots of business since Monday's big storm, including removing the fir tree that snapped completely off near its base and crashed onto a garage on Peirce Street. 

Jan DiTarando wasn't at her Peirce Street house on Monday, so she didn't hear the crack and feel the crash of the decades-old tree, but her neighbors did and they notified her. The downed tree stretched into the street for a couple of days, hampering traffic until town workers cleared some of the branches out of the way.

On Friday, East Greenwich Tree Service was on the scene, with treeman Kevin Scavitti carefully dismantling the tree.

"It was absolutely a gorgeous tree. I would always admire it as I was coming up the road. What do trees do? Shelter you from the sun, from the wind, from the noise," DiTarando said. This tree also gave off the delicious smell of pine. "I'm most happy nobody was hurt, my house wasn't touched. Things can be replaced."

EG Tree Service's Maureen Schreffler, who owns the business with her husband, Mike, said they've been busy since Tuesday, but that it wasn't nearly as crazy as it had been after Tropical Storm Irene last August. 

"No comparison," she said. "Irene caused a lot more damage. ... I'd say this is probably a tenth of the work we got from Irene."

But she's only referring to local work. Mike and the company's two other crews are in Manhattan, Maureen said, doing tree work for power company Con Edison. They went down to New York on Sunday before the storm hit and will stay for as long as it takes. 

"He said it's absolutely horrible. It's devastated there," Maureen said. "They were lucky this morning to find fuel. It's taken him three hours to travel a 20-minute route."

On Peirce Street, the work was delicate, but the conditions were far easier.