Who Pays for the Damage Caused by Fallen Trees in Missoula?

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Last Wednesday’s extreme thunderstorm event caused millions of dollars in damages, primarily from trees snapped off or simply pulled up by the roots which then fell on homes, cars, and other private and public property.

At Monday’s joint press conference, Associate Director for Ecosystem Services with the City of Missoula, Morgan Valiant, answered my questions about liability for the damage caused by fallen trees.

The Long Task of Documenting All the Fallen Trees is Underway

“Right now, as (Missoula Fire Chief) Gordy (Hughes) alluded to, we are very much in triage, coming out of triage mode and really moving into a lot of data collection mode,” began Valiant. “We've been taking a ton of reports. I think we got 300 to 400 reports that involved us to follow up within the first few days. We are now in the process of just documenting the damage.”

Valiant described the steps to take to file a claim with the city.

How to File a Claim with the City

“If it's a public tree that has fallen and damaged private infrastructure, we're requesting people record it, take tons of pictures, and get the information to our office,” he said. “We will get it in the queue. We have to go out and independently review each of these sites. And there are claim forms, so we're going to be processing a bunch of claim forms as well to determine whether or not there is any compensation available.”

Valiant said regarding healthy trees, your private homeowner's insurance may have to pay for the damage.

“Most times if that tree is in otherwise healthy condition; and we've seen a lot of failures of healthy trees; just full on, tipped over trees and there were no known defects in that tree, it is going to be the homeowner's private insurance that covers the cost of that,” he said. “If there is a known defect in that tree that we were aware of, that we'd already documented that caused that failure, then the city will accept liability for that, and we'll work through our city insurance.”

RELATED STORIES

• Missoula County: What You Need to Know After the Severe Thunderstorm
• Missoula Fire Chief on Community Response After Storm
• 200+ Lightning Strikes Reported Near Missoula Following Storm
• The Aftermath From Last Night’s Wild Storm in Missoula [Photos]
• Missoula County: Do Not Go in Area Streams or Rivers and Other Key Information

It Will Take a Long Time to Deal With All the Fallen Trees

Valiant said obviously his department is overwhelmed simply with the job of removing downed trees before determining who will pay for damages.

“We are doing our best to address all of those public trees,” he said. “We are obviously overwhelmed. If anybody does decide to take on removal on their own, I would highly caution them that there are a lot of dynamic forces going on. I certainly recommend that you reach out to a trained arborist or forestry crew to remove that if you need it removed quicker than when we can get to you.”

Click here to listen to the entire press conference.