The first hour, in order.

Get everyone out from under the damaged part of the house and keep them out, including the room that looks fine from the doorway. A tree that has landed on a structure has not finished moving. It is held by whatever it broke on the way down, and that can let go hours later with no warning and no sound before it happens.

The crew's own standing storm advice is the first thing on their emergency page, and it is worth repeating in full: stay away from downed power lines, stay out from under sagging limbs, and do not park vehicles under a leaning tree. The rest of what to leave alone, hazard by hazard, is in what not to touch after a storm.

Call 911, not a tree company, if anyone is hurt or trapped, if there is fire or the smell of gas, or if the tree has taken a wire down across a road where somebody could drive into it. A tree crew is the right call for the tree. It is not the right first call for any of those.

This is the part homeowners get wrong most often, because a line lying in wet grass looks dead. Duke Energy's guidance is to treat every power line that has fallen or is sagging, and every tree, limb or object in contact with one, as energized and dangerous. That includes the tree in the yard. Keep children and pets away from the whole area, not just the wire.

If a line comes down across a car with someone inside it, the instruction is to stay in the car. Duke's own wording for the exception is worth knowing before it is needed: if you must get out because of fire or another immediate life-threatening situation, jump clear of the car and land on both feet, and be sure no part of your body is touching the car when your feet touch the ground.

Davidson County is served by more than one electric provider, which is why generic storm advice to call the power company is not much help at two in the morning. Call whichever one sends the bill, and the number is printed on it. Whose wire is whose, from the pole to the meter, is covered in a tree on a power line, and whose wire it is.

• Duke Energy Carolinas: 800-769-3766
• Lexington Utilities, the City of Lexington's own electric system: (336) 248-2337, with an automated attendant around the clock
• EnergyUnited, the member-owned cooperative: 1-800-386-4833

Duke Energy's published rule is that anyone working or lifting within ten feet of an overhead line has to contact the utility first, that the distance grows with higher voltage, and that approach distances for crane work are different again. Their instruction to homeowners is blunter: never cut trees near overhead power lines until you have met with a company representative, and pruning near lines should be left to trained crews.

So a tree crew that offers to start cutting while a line is in the picture is telling you something about itself. The line gets cleared or de-energized by the people who own it, and the tree work happens after that.

The North Carolina Department of Insurance is direct about the order: before doing any temporary repairs, photograph and make a list of the damage. That sentence is easy to skim past at midnight and expensive to skip, because the tree is the evidence, and the tree stops existing the moment a saw touches it.

Photograph from the street, from the yard, and from inside the rooms that are open to weather, before anyone climbs, cuts or covers anything. There is a short checklist of what to capture on the what to photograph page, written from the same NCDOI guidance.

Not the homeowner, not a neighbor with a chainsaw, not a handyman. The emergency page already argues why the cutting itself is not a handyman job. The first-hour version is simpler: the roof is now a surface with unknown holes in it, holding a load that is under tension, and the person standing on it cannot see what is holding what. Why the order of the cuts matters so much on a roof is explained in how a crane takes a tree's weight off a house.

The same applies to the yard directly under a hung limb. If something has to be moved to stop further damage, the honest limit is what can be done with both feet on the ground and nothing overhead.

This is the part that actually saves time on the day, and it costs nothing to do while the phone is ringing. Move cars off the driveway and out from under anything leaning, because the driveway is usually the most solid surface to set up on. Unlock the gate, and measure nothing, just say how wide it is. Note where the septic tank and drain field are if the property is on septic, because outriggers and soft ground are a bad combination.

If the crane is the likely method, and on a tree that is already on a structure it usually is, the setup spot is the first thing the crew will look at. The crane page covers how that call gets made. Why a driveway usually beats the lawn, and what soft ground and a septic field do to the setup, is explained in what a crane needs from a lot.

The line is answered around the clock. What makes the call fast is knowing what the crew needs before they can say anything useful.

After that, the question is usually whether this is a right-now job or a Monday job, and there is a page on exactly that: emergency or Monday job. The Davidson County storm log carries a dated entry for each storm that reached the county, with the Weather Service's watch and warning terms and the electric providers' numbers beside it.

• What came down: whole tree, a leader, a single limb
• What it is on: roof, car, driveway, fence, or just the yard
• Whether any wire is involved, and whether the utility has been called
• Whether anyone is hurt
• Whether the house is open to the weather
• Your town, and how tight the access is