Dead and Hazard Tree Removal in Santa Rosa, CA

Dead and hazard tree removal is about timing. A tree that just died still has strong wood and can usually be climbed and taken down in sections like a live one. A year or two later, decay fungi have moved through the sapwood, branches snap without warning, and the same tree may need a lift or a crane because no one should climb it. In Santa Rosa, three things kill trees in numbers: wildfire, drought and sudden oak death, and they often work together.

After the Tubbs and Glass fires

Fire kills the living layer under the bark even where the tree still looks green. In the Fountaingrove II open space, a consulting arborist's report counted 1,121 dead trees removed in 2018, the year after the Tubbs Fire: 347 Douglas fir, 408 bay laurel, 294 native oaks, 40 madrones, 26 redwoods and 6 bigleaf maples. The report cited pests, disease and extended drought alongside fire damage. Homeowners in Fountaingrove, Coffey Park, Skyhawk and the rebuilt parts of Larkfield-Wikiup still have survivors from those fires, and some are slowly declining. Redwoods often resprout along the trunk after fire and recover; Douglas fir and pines generally do not.

Sudden oak death

Sudden oak death infects coast live oak, California black oak, canyon live oak, Shreve's oak and tanoak, and it spreads from infected bay laurel leaves. The state homeowner guide says tanoaks usually die within one to two years of infection and coast live oaks within three to four or more, and that infection lets decay fungi into the wood, raising the risk of failure. Disease alone is generally not a reason to remove an oak; a dead or failing oak standing over a house, driveway or play area is. Wood from infected trees should stay on the property or go to a landfill tarped.

Signs a tree has become a hazard

• Dead top or more than a third of the crown bare in the growing season
• Bark falling off in sheets, or mushrooms and conks at the base
• Bleeding, dark cankers on an oak trunk with a bay laurel nearby
• A deep vertical crack, or two trunks spreading apart at a V-shaped fork
• A new lean, with soil cracked or lifted on the far side
• Woodpecker holes and sawdust on pines, a sign of bark beetles in drought years

Defensible space

Dead trees near homes are also fuel. Santa Rosa's weed abatement rules already require owners in the wildland urban interface, vacant lots and parcels with more than half an acre of undeveloped land to keep grass under four inches during fire season, and dead trees and dead limbs near a house are part of the same picture. Removing them, along with ladder fuels under the trees you keep, is a large part of fire-safety work in the eastern hills.