Post #774226 by Prikli Pear on Mon, Mar 20, 2017 7:21 AM

That's just insane. The big concern power companies have are trees that grow branches/limbs over and into power lines. Palm trees are generally considered power-ling friendly, even if they're fairly close, because they don't have limbs to break and pull the lines down. Trees can grow directly under lines as long as they're not actually reaching up into them, and even then, the policy of most companies is to trim them back, not chop down entirely.

Our power company's actually been focused on this for the past couple of months, as there are a bunch of rural roads around us that haven't been maintained in many years (there's a cedar elm in the neighbor's yard that's completely entangled in our lines--if it goes down, it's taking all of our power with it). I haven't seen those crews remove a single tree.

After reading that article and looking at the photos, I suspect the family has solid grounds for a lawsuit. Judging by the promises by the power company to replace the felled palms, they do, too. This is the work of a crew that was 1) poorly trained, 2) didn't care, or 3) all of the above.