Normally the yield of lumber worthy logs from storms is less than you'd think. Yes, plenty of trees get damaged and ultimately removed, but many seem to get totally destroyed when falling or land on a house and need to come out in small pieces. Neither situation yields anything a sawmill would be interested in. There are plenty of situations like this today from the tornado that touched down recently. But the damage path is so long that there is lots of good recyclable material too. The number of tree removals will be huge this year. Spring is normally a busy season for urban log recycling since homeowners finally come out and look around outside and notice that something is wrong with the tree. So Joe is working long days now since he is getting a load or two of logs per day from the storm on top of his regular supply.
I doubt any municipality is really prepared for the scale of damage they are now dealing with. Certainly the smaller ones with a couple guys that cut grass all summer are not. So when Joe showed up on a street full of work trucks and sees two guys standing around a log and another downed tree, he asked if he could help. He made short work of the log, loading it in minutes. The crane is an awesome and fun power tool. "What about that other one?" Joe asks. "Well, maybe you could help," came the reply. "Do you have a saw?"
Does Joe have a chain saw? HA! That is like asking a gunfighter if he carries bullets. So Joe says nothing, calmly opens the tool box on the truck, pulls out the Stihl 260, sets it down, pulls out the Stihl 460, sets it down, reaches in and pulls out the Stihl 660 with 36 inch bar, fires it up, cuts off the root ball, removes the top and any branches and tries not to notice the reverent gaze and slack jaws on the others. "Yeah, it looks like you can help us." Two business cards and a short speech later and now we are getting calls from another group glad they do not have to chunk up perfectly good logs with dinky Homelite saws.
NOTE ABOUT THE GALLERY: I know it is missing. I went to add some more pictures of projects made from our wood and clicked "save as a draft" not knowing that the button really meant "Bwa ha ha ha. Gotcha!" The gallery immediately reverted to an ancient version and my efforts to figure out what how who soon lead to it disappearing altogether. I still do not know what or how, but I think I know who. If I can work it out, it will return. Not as a draft though.
