Lesser Tree Crews Would Be Stumped

Every profession has its busy season. For Henry Canales and his crew, this is it.

Canales, tree maintenance supervisor for the notoriously well-groomed city of Irvine, rushed from one challenge to another Tuesday, the second day of high Santa Ana winds that knocked out power, blew clouds of dust -- and toppled trees.

As Canales tooled around town in a big, white city pickup, his cell phone bleated constantly with complaints relayed from residents with limbs drifting in their swimming pools or sprawled on their lawns. But Canales and his four crews from the city’s urban forestry department were in triage mode, and some things take a higher priority.

Like the eucalyptus tree with the cracked trunk, swaying in a median near Northwood Park. Not long after Canales spotted the problem, the tree was sawed down and fed into a wood chipper.

“I’m not even going to worry about those things until we have the dangerous jobs out of the way,” he said. “Things like that eucalyptus tree that was breaking -- I don’t sleep well at night when I know there’s stuff out there like that.”

The workers also made speedy work of branches blown across roads, limbs strewn over rooftops and a heavy section of a pine tree drooping into a park, one gust away from plunging 60 feet onto the jogging trail. In two days, Canales estimated, crews cleared away or chopped down about 100 small trees, roughly 30 medium-size trees and half a dozen that neared 100 feet.

Each windstorm means two to three days of cleanup and months until fallen trees are replaced.

Although the windstorm justifiably upset some residents, such as the man whose brand new truck was destroyed when a tree in front of his house fell on it, others saw the subsequent cleanup as a chance to take care of some early holiday decorating.

As a crew chopped up the pine by the jogging trail, a woman in running clothes and a white bandanna wrapped around her head darted in and out of the bustle. Clutching what appeared to be a foot-long steak knife, she clipped branches loaded with pine cones until Canales told her to leave.

“My gosh, these people don’t realize how dangerous this can be,” he said, shaking his head. “Those guys aren’t wearing hard hats for fun.”

As the tree was reduced to a pile of chips and the smell of pine permeated the air, foreman Sergio Macias monitored his crew of six men, who ordinarily spend their days trimming the city’s roughly 54,000 trees.

“It’s nice to be doing something where you know you’re really helping people,” he said, as he watched branches sail down from the sky.

The job does have its dangers for the workers, some of whom were hoisted 100 feet to chop the uppermost portions of the trees as the wind buffeted their crane along with the branches.

“It can get pretty hairy,” said John Cecconi, who has been working with Irvine’s tree maintenance department for seven years. Cecconi had just descended from 50 feet, where he had been helping partner Ken Kanocz fell a tree that had partially collapsed onto the adjacent house.

Still, the danger presents a thrill that breaks up the monotony of their normal routine, Cecconi said.

“The faster pace makes the day go by really quickly,” he said. “You don’t get a chance to grab a breath, much less get bored.”