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6 questions · use after any storm

Storm damage assessment

Triage a damaged tree safely from a distance: what's an emergency, what can wait, what's likely saveable, and what to photograph for your insurance claim.

The morning after a Kansas storm, the hardest thing to judge is which of the damaged trees in the yard is a problem for today and which is a problem for a Saturday in March. This walks six questions in the order the hazards actually rank — wires first, then anything resting on a building, then wood still hanging overhead — and every one of them is answerable from where you are standing.

Answer honestly, including “I cannot tell from here”. That answer is treated as a yes, which is the right way round: the situations worth being wrong about are the ones that put somebody under a limb.

Before you answer anything

If a wire is involved, if a tree is on a house with people inside, or if anyone is hurt, stop here and make the call — the utility first for anything touching a line, and 911 for fire, sparking, an injury, or a tree across a road where traffic is still moving. Neither call waits for a questionnaire.

Question 1 of 6

Answer from a safe distance

Is any part of the tree touching a power line, or is a line down?

Answer from wherever you are standing now. Nothing about this improves by walking closer for a better look.

Our tools provide general education based on your answers. They are not a diagnosis, a safety inspection, or professional advice.

Honest boundaries

What this cannot tell you

This is an education tool working from six answers typed into a phone. It is not an inspection, and there is a specific list of things it is structurally unable to know.

  • Whether the tree is sound inside

    Decay works from the inside out, and a trunk can be a shell behind bark that looks perfectly normal from six feet away. Nothing you can answer from a distance — and nothing this tool can infer — tells you how much solid wood is left.

  • How much wood is still hanging up there

    The single most common thing a homeowner misses after a Kansas storm is a branch that broke free and lodged in the canopy. It is hard to see from below, it is held by friction, and it comes down on its own schedule. If you could not see clearly up through the crown, this tool has been working from an incomplete picture.

  • Whether a lean is new

    The question that decides whether a leaning tree is urgent is whether it leaned yesterday, and only you know that. A lean a tree grew into over decades is a different object from one it acquired overnight.

  • What your insurer will actually pay for

    Coverage for tree removal, structural damage, and emergency stabilisation varies by policy and by what was damaged. The documentation guidance here helps whatever the answer turns out to be, but the answer comes from your policy and your adjuster.

  • Whose tree, and whose wire

    Street trees, easements, service drops, and shared boundary trees all change who decides and who pays. Those answers come from your city and your utility, not from a questionnaire.

A “likely manageable” result is not a clean bill of health. It means nothing in your answers matched a known emergency pattern. If something about the tree still bothers you, that instinct is worth more than this tool — get someone to stand next to it.

Keep going

The guides behind these answers

Every verdict here is drawn from the storm hub and the symptom guides. Each one goes considerably deeper than six questions can.

Kansas Tree Guide is an independent educational resource. Nothing on this site replaces an on-site assessment by a qualified arborist or tree-care professional. Last reviewed August 2026.