Sometimes one company isn’t enough. The lightning-struck poplar over Cooper Street in Woodbury was a public-safety hazard. Bringing it down safely meant sidewalks closed, a road closure, a 55-ton crane, and the relationships that make a job like this possible.
This is the second half of a two-part story. Earlier that summer, Paul filmed a poplar tree in South Jersey that had taken a direct lightning hit overnight — bark blown off the trunk, one fragment carried far enough to break a window. By August the tree had stopped being a curiosity and started being a problem. It was over Cooper Street in Woodbury. Pieces of it could come down at any time. The clock was running.
Teamwork makes the DREAM work · Tree Awareness
“Sometimes when you’re doing a big project, you have to shut the sidewalks down to control for pedestrian traffic. We also have a road closure today. We’re working with Pete the Crane Man, 55-ton crane. They had a large lightning-struck poplar tree. Pete’s running the crane, you got Jake Briggs up in the tree, Drop Constantino, Jack Lavoie, Rikiya, two people out, Jared Hudson. So we have the disposition: tree poses a hazard, public safety, because it’s right over Cooper Street, Woodbury. Sometimes you have to capitalize on the relationships that you have in order to get the job done right.” Paul Biester · NJ LTE #408
Removing a structurally compromised hardwood tree directly above a public street is one of the more demanding jobs in tree care. Five things had to line up at once.
Permits and traffic control. A road closure on a county road requires coordination with municipal authorities and police. Sidewalks have to be closed to pedestrian traffic on both sides of the work zone. Cones, barricades, advance signage, a flagger if needed. None of that happens by itself the morning of the job.
The crane. A 55-ton crane (Pete the Crane Man) is the right tool when the tree is too compromised to climb safely and too tall or too tightly placed to drop pieces conventionally. The crane operator picks the tree apart from the top down, lifting cut sections clear of the road and lowering them into the work zone. Each pick is rigged, signaled, cut, lifted, and placed. The pace is deliberate.
The climber. Even with a crane, a climber goes up to set the rigging and make the cuts. Jake Briggs was on the rope work for this job. The climber’s job is to read the tree as it comes apart — loads shift, weight redistributes, what was stable five minutes ago may not be stable now. On a lightning-damaged tree, internal cracking and dead tissue are not always visible from the outside. Reading that in real time is the climber’s skill.
The ground crew. Drop Constantino, Jack Lavoie, Rikiya, Jared Hudson. Each cut piece has to be unrigged from the crane, moved out of the work zone, processed for haul-off, and the work area kept clean for the next pick. A clean ground means safer climbing — the climber can’t be worrying about where things are landing.
The relationships. Paul names this explicitly in the video, and it’s the unsung part of how a job like this actually gets done. Pete the Crane Man isn’t a Tree Awareness employee. Neither are some of the climbers and rope hands on the job. A 55-ton crane operator with the experience to work over a public road on a lightning-damaged hardwood — that’s a relationship built across years of jobs together. When the call comes in on a Friday for Saturday morning work, that relationship is what makes a same-week response possible.
The question on this poplar was the same question on every storm-damaged tree: prolong life or take it down? On most strikes, an arborist tries to keep the tree if it’s structurally sound. On this one, the verdict was clear. Cambium loss was severe; the tree’s position over Cooper Street meant the consequences of any future limb failure were unacceptable; the velocity of the original bark fragment that broke a window earlier in the summer was evidence that this tree could already throw projectiles. The disposition was removal.
That conversation has to happen before the crane is on site. A risk assessment, a target evaluation, a written disposition. Done properly, the day-of work is execution — not decision-making.
“Teamwork makes the DREAM work” is a phrase that gets printed on motivational posters and means almost nothing. On a job like this, it means specifically: a 55-ton crane on a closed county road, run by a long-time partner; an experienced climber with a ground crew that can keep up with him; a Plant Health Care company that knows when to stop trying to save a tree and when to take it down; and the permitting work to do all of that legally on a Saturday morning before the next thunderstorm rolls through.
From a homeowner’s point of view, the takeaway is simpler. If you have a tree over a public street that took a hit, the assessment and the removal are not a project to wait on. Emergency response → · Risk assessment →
