A massive ponderosa pine comes crashing down, crushing a Chevy Tahoe and causing massive property damage. This was during a storm in February 2015. Had we known the tree was going to come crashing down, it wouldn’t have mattered. Due to Ashland’s “Tree City USA” and the fact that it wasn’t on the property would have prevented any “legal” approach. The tree could have been illegally cut down, which in hindsight we would have had no problem breaking the law to prevent $100k+ worth of damage.
City of Ashland: No Way To Legally Prevent Tree Falling
Photos – Tree Crushes Woman’s House / Car In Ashland, Oregon
Ashland, OR Tree Damages House and Car
If a property dispute wasn’t bad enough, now this happened. Major damage to the house and Chevy Tahoe and no resolution in sight. Worst of all, the City Administrator told us that if we had know that the tree would have fell beforehand, due to the tree ordinances and the fact it wasn’t on the property, the only way to remedy the situation would have been to illegally cut it down.
Here’s the pictures of the damage:
City of Ashland Refuses To Fix Electrical Problem
City of Ashland Refuses To Fix Electrical Problem
Note: the problem has since been fixed. Don’t know what made them change their mind, but they came back and did everything.
So after the tree fell and completely wrecked the house, a piece of wood was found embedded deep where the underground electric runs. A call was made to both the City of Ashland and the call before you dig people. The City of Ashland shows up and states that this is serious and that they are going to have to return the next day with more people and equipment to get the piece of wood out.
City Of Ashland Then Refuses To Help
The next day there was a phone call. The City of Ashland was now stating that it wasn’t their problem, and that the burden to test and repair lies on the property owner. The one problem? There’s an ongoing property line dispute and technically the electric is on the neighbors property, even though it’s on our side of the fence!
But yet the city was very persistent that even though it wasn’t on our property, it still was our property. But are we even allowed to dig up somebody else’s property to get to our property and repair it? The whole thing doesn’t make sense.
When City of Ashland came out and was shown the maps of the property and property line dispute, the city employee basically said “Oh, shit!” jumped in his vehicle and left.
It has since been resolved. I guess that means it was a city issue afterall?