JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — During Hurricane Preparedness Week, Jacksonville’s utility service is working to get locals ready for the upcoming season of storms.
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Powerful winds and floodwaters can lead to broken branches and uprooted trees, potentially causing severe property damage.
JEA provided the following tips for keeping your trees and property properly maintained before a storm:
- Proper Tree Maintenance: Healthy trees can best weather storms and inclement weather. Proper pruning when trees are young can help build a strong tree structure as the tree grows. Proper pruning of mature trees can increase strength and resistance to storms. Contact a local certified arborist to schedule a site visit.
- Proper Pruning: JEA crews routinely prune vegetation away from utility structures & equipment. Property owners can do the same: Prune branches away from utility lines, roofs, buildings, driveways and other critical infrastructure.
- Dead Trees: Remove dead standing trees. Dead standing trees create a hazard for you, neighboring properties, and municipal rights-of-way.
- Don’t Delay: Schedule tree work well in advance of an approaching storm. Once a storm is in the forecast, municipalities and utilities activate storm plans, and tree crews are immediately directed to priority tasks associated with critical infrastructure and essential emergency services. Response for individual pleas and isolated requests may be delayed and caught in the bottleneck of the high volume of calls received by call centers and storm response centers.
- Address Numbers: Legible and visible address numbers on homes or mailboxes is an important part of preparing your property for a storm. Missing, faded, or absent numbers can hinder emergency and utility crews from quickly responding to calls for assistance
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“Trees are incredibly resilient regarding storms, but often its the dead, declining, or trees with structural defects that fail during the storms,” said JEA arborist Joe Anderson. He recommends property owners, especially those with mature trees, have a risk assessment done on their trees by a certified arborist every two to three years.
Property owners are also encouraged to look beyond their boundaries. JEA says to encourage your neighbors to adopt proper tree care practices for trees within adjacent properties. Although a tree may be rooted in a neighboring property, ones that fail during a storm and fall on “your side of the fence” may become your responsibility.
A recent Florida bill would have shifted responsibility to the person who owns the property where a tree is rooted, but it was never voted on and approved by lawmakers before the end of the legislative session.
You can contact JEA Tree Care at jeatreecare@jea.com or 904-665-6050 with any tree/utility questions.
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