Arborists work through backlog of fallen trees after ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred
By Bruce MacKenzie
ABC North Coast
Topic:Cyclones
1m ago1 minutes agoFri 14 Mar 2025 at 9:44pm
A house and car covered by fallen trees.
Fallen trees still cover this house and car in Bilambil Heights. (ABC North Coast: Bruce MacKenzie)
In short:
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred produced wind gusts of more than 100kph in northern NSW.
The landscape is still littered with fallen trees.
What's next?
Arborists are working long days to try to keep up with demand.
In a landscape still littered with fallen trees after ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, arborists are facing a huge backlog of jobs.
Casey Grimes, who works around the Tweed Shire on the NSW North Coast, said he could not keep up with the demand from people needing trees cut down or trimmed.
"It's been extremely busy, some sleepless nights and some wet soggy gear," he said.
"Probably the worst storm that I've seen come through, especially in this area.
"I'm getting about 60–70 calls in one single day over the past week, and probably looking at 10 to 15 jobs a day."
A man in a green and yellow polo shirt
Arborist Casey Grimes is getting up to 70 calls a day in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. (ABC North Coast: Bruce MacKenzie)
Record wind wreaks havoc
The Northern Rivers region of NSW was battered by winds with gusts of more than 100 kilometres an hour as Alfred headed towards the coast.
Byron Bay experienced its strongest March wind gust in 22 years of records when gusts of 120kph hit on March 7.
Peter Gray, a board member of industry group Arboriculture, said it was impossible to estimate how many trees were damaged.
"You would have think about what you're counting: are you talking about whole tree failure or parts of trees?" he said.
"Casuarinas seemed to have failed a lot this time; we also see quite a bit of failure in paper bark trees, but it's very much driven by localities.
"A lot of tree failure close to the coast, but further away not so much."
A seat around a tree that has been cut down and lies in the background.
This Norfolk Pine had to be cut down after it was weakened by strong winds during ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. (Supplied: Marc Wilson)
Mr Gray, who last week made the decision to cut down three huge Norfolk Pines on the Byron Bay beachfront, said some trees might have been internally damaged by the winds.
"What can happen, particularly with tree branches, is that they get internal cracks due to these strong winds," he said.
"The branch doesn't actually fail, but the crack stays there … so we can see branch failure months or even years after the initial damage was caused."
Man in a yellow shirt and a cloth cap stands in front of a fallen tree.
Arborist Peter Grey inspected the Norfolk pines that line the Byron Bay foreshore. (ABC North Coast: Bruce MacKenzie)
Trees the main cause of damage
The State Emergency Service (SES) took more than 13,700 calls during the natural disaster and logged more than 7,400 incidents.
Catherine Garvan, who is the Mullumbimby SES Deputy Unit Commander, said 645 of those jobs were in the Byron Shire.
"The vast majority of those were trees coming down, trees blocking people in their driveways or houses or on cars," she said.
"We're keeping the arborists pretty busy, I can tell you that.
A large gum tree lies on its side.
This mature gum tree in Suffolk Park was uprooted by strong winds. (ABC North Coast: Bruce MacKenzie)
"A lot of our volunteers on the ground are dispensing hugs, which are sometimes a really good antidote for what people are going through."
NSW Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib said almost 3,000 homes across the Northern Rivers and Mid-North Coast had so far been assessed for damage.
"At this stage we're looking at about 50 or so that need a little bit of repair work," he said.
"Thankfully, there hasn't been as much damage as there could have been."
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Posted1m ago1 minutes agoFri 14 Mar 2025 at 9:44pm
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