Told a homeowner in Salem his 80 foot Doug fir was fine, 6 weeks later it came down on his fence

Iris Mason · 2026-09-17T04:00:05.141211+00:00

Back in March a guy in Salem called me out to look at a big Doug fir leaning maybe 4 degrees toward his shop, and I walked the root flare, checked for conks, and told him it was just phototropism. Six weeks later, after three straight days of rain, the whole thing tipped and smashed 40 feet of his cedar fence plus his kid's play structure. I was wrong, plain and simple, and I have been kicking myself since because I never once poked the soil or looked for a buried root plate issue on the wet side. A 4 degree lean on a tree that size with no visible decay still should have gotten a resistograph or at least a second set of eyes. So where do you all draw the line between a lean you call normal and one you flag for further testing?

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Told a homeowner in Salem his 80 foot Doug fir was fine, 6 weeks later it came down on his fence | Arborists - Hub Chatter