Photograph it before anyone cuts it.
The North Carolina Department of Insurance puts it in one sentence: before doing any temporary repairs, photograph and make a list of the damage. This page is the practical version of that sentence for a tree, written for the ten minutes between the storm passing and the first saw starting. It is a documentation checklist, and nothing on it is a claim about what any policy covers.
Safety still comes before the camera
No photograph is worth standing under a hung limb or near a wire for. Everything here is shot from the ground, from a distance, and from places nobody has to climb to reach. If a wire is in the picture, the utility gets called before anything else happens, which is the whole point of the first hour page.
Why the tree is the part people forget
Almost everyone photographs the hole in the roof. Far fewer photograph the tree that made it, and the tree is the half of the evidence that is about to be cut into pieces and hauled away. Once it is gone, the only record that a forty-year oak was lying across the back half of the house is whatever somebody took on a phone in the rain.
That is also the order the regulator asks for. NCDOI's instruction is to photograph and list the damage before any temporary repairs, to make temporary repairs only, to save the receipts for materials, and not to have permanent repairs done until the insurer has inspected the property and the cost has been agreed. Emergency tree work is the thing that stops the damage getting worse, so it lands early in that sequence, which is exactly why the photographs have to come first.
The checklist
Wide shots first, then close ones, and more than feels necessary. Storage is free and a second visit to an intact scene is not possible.
- The whole property from the street, so the scale of the tree and the position of the house are in one frame
- The tree where it lies, from at least two sides, including the base and any roots pulled up out of the ground
- The point of contact: where the trunk or limb meets the roof, the car, the fence
- Every damaged room from inside, including ceilings, and anything wet
- Water coming in, while it is coming in
- Contents that got hit, individually, before they are moved
- The stump or the standing remainder, if the tree broke rather than uprooted
- A short video walking the whole property, narrated with the date and what is being looked at
What to write down while you shoot
The list matters as much as the pictures, because a photograph does not say when it rained. Note the date and time the tree came down, the weather at the time, when the power went out and came back, who was called and when, and anything that has already been moved or covered.
Keep receipts for tarps, plywood, fasteners and anything else bought to keep the weather out. The regulator names those specifically, and they are easy to lose in a week where nobody is thinking about paperwork.
Where the crew fits in the paperwork, and where it stops
Arbor Aves Tree & Crane works with your insurance company to make the process smoother. What that involves on a particular job is a fair question to ask when the job is quoted.
It does not extend to filing a claim, negotiating one, or telling a homeowner what their policy covers. Those belong to the reader, their agent and their carrier, and the order a claim moves in after the photographs, from the first call to the adjuster's visit, is set out in how tree damage insurance claims work in North Carolina. The Department of Insurance runs a consumer line at 855-408-1212 for the questions that are genuinely about coverage rather than about trees.
Photographs taken? The crew can take the tree.
Questions people actually ask.
Can I move branches off the driveway before photographing everything?
Photograph the driveway first, from both ends, and then move what has to move to get a car out or a person through. The regulator's sequence is documentation, then temporary measures to prevent further damage, and clearing a blocked exit falls into the second one.
What if the tree came down days ago and I did not take pictures?
Photograph what is still there, including the stump, any torn-up roots, the scars on the roof and any debris still in the yard, and write down the date it happened. Late documentation is worth more than none, and nobody is served by inventing a photograph that does not exist.
Do you take photographs of the job as well?
That is a fair question to put to the crew when the job is quoted. Whatever a crew records later is not a substitute for the homeowner's own photographs taken before anything was touched, because by the time a crew arrives the scene has usually already changed.
Should I photograph the neighbor's tree if it fell on my house?
Photograph everything you can see from your own property, including where the tree came from and its base. Who is responsible for what afterwards is a question for the two policies involved, and it is not one a tree crew should answer.