Heard a city inspector talking about hidden trunk decay...

I was grabbing lunch at a deli near the job site in Portland last Thursday and overheard a city inspector talking to a contractor. He said they're finding more and more big old oaks that look healthy from the outside but have decay hollowing out the center near the base. He mentioned one tree that looked fine last spring but failed during a light windstorm because the internal rot had spread up about 6 feet inside the trunk. It got me thinking about how easy it is to miss that kind of damage if you're just doing a visual check. I've been climbing trees for 8 years and I'm starting to wonder if I should invest in a resistograph or at least start sounding more trunks with a mallet before I commit to a removal. Has anyone else had a close call where a tree looked solid but turned out to be hollow inside?

2 comments

2 Comments

torres.drew1mo ago

That thin shell thing is exactly what spooks me, @faith_lopez48. I've got a question for you though, when you bailed, did you already have gear in the tree or did you notice something off before you fully committed? I've been using a mallet more lately, but I still don't trust it on big trunks, too much bark and sound gets muffled. Curious if you've ever had a tree pass a good sound test and then still turn out rotten up top.

faith_lopez481mo agoProlific Poster

Man, I had a massive red oak in northeast Portland last year that looked like a total champ from the street. Big fat trunk, full canopy, the whole nine yards. Get my climbing spikes in about four feet up and there's basically nothing but a thin shell holding that whole thing up, like a giant papier-mache sculpture. I bailed out of that climb real fast and told the homeowner they were lucky a stiff breeze didn't take out their garage. Yeah, a sounding mallet is probably a good call, or you could always just bring a boom lift and skip the guessing game entirely.