Save Champ and Natalie from Boris!

[Update on 1/26/2024: Boris is DOWN, safely, without harm to houses or people. Thanks so much to everyone who donated, prayed, shared, and sent encouragement. Special and huge thanks to Veronica and Marcos and their team at Azteca Tree Service, who did the work of actually bring the tree down, without cranes or helicopters, and gave us a very fair price. Thanks also to Brandon and Adam at KOIN 6, who documented the dilemma and the resolution. Below are a few photos.

OH!! And: Champ, as far as we can tell, has sprung back fully upright and is doing great, minus a few branches. She'll get another arborist exam to make sure, but she's still with us for now.

If you donated, we have sent you a message offering to refund your donation, since the final amount was so much less than it might have been. Check your email! We will refund donations from all donors we haven't heard from by January 31st.]

[Boris: 1915-2024]

Hi, we are the Ladds (Stephanie, Jim, Lucy, and Naomi) and we are raising money to try to save our neighbor Natalie's house from a 150-ft leaning Doug Fir we've nicknamed Boris. Boris is leaning against a heroic smaller tree we've nicknamed Champ, who has held for a week so far against all odds (through snow, ice, and gusting wind). Boris is extremely dangerous to climb and difficult to access even by crane; this may be a multi-crane or even a helicopter job (hence the astronomical price tag). Any donation helps; we are in a race against time before Champ gives out and Boris crashes down, likely bringing four smaller trees with him.

On Saturday, January 13th, at the beginning of the Pacific Northwest winter storm that we've nicknamed Treemageddon 2024, Stephanie looked out the kitchen window while finishing a bowl of chicken soup and realized that Boris was leaning at a sickening angle straight toward our neighbor Natalie's house. In every gust of wind, the tree rocked back into the ground, and then over again, about 10 feet of movement near the bottom, and over 30 feet all the way up by the crown. The whole surrounding area heaved as the root ball rocked.

Boris is one of the biggest trees in our foresty back yard southwest of Portland, OR. Lucy and Naomi had a fairy cave among his roots. Champ is the nearest to Boris of four smaller Doug firs on Natalie's property, and has been holding Boris up for a week. She deserves the Purple Heart for Trees. All four of Champ's grove-mates are in the fall path, which is good in the sense that they may help hold Boris up, and also in that trees are stronger in groves because their roots interlace. But it is bad in the sense if Boris falls he will bring down all of them, and half the hillside.

When we saw Boris leaning on Saturday the 13th, Jim called Natalie and told her to leave now; we grabbed our go bags and warm clothes, and fled.

Thus began a week of calls to arborists and tree removal specialists. We made the calls from our new home down the hill at Stephanie's parents' house, where the girls sleep on the floor at the foot of Stephanie's mom Claudia's bed, Jim and Stephanie sleep on a foam mattress in the living room, and Jim works from the TV room just off the living room. Estimates were made; appointments were scheduled. Then appointments were canceled for ice and rescheduled, only to be canceled again for wind. More calls were made.

We started a text thread with Natalie and the neighbors behind Boris, Daniel and Samantha, who stayed in their house. It contains many weeping faces and hearts, and faithful morningly updates from Daniel or Samantha saying some version of "It's still standing!" Or "The other tree is holding!" or "He's still just leaning on his buddy like the skipper after a few too many."

"That little tree is a champ," one of our specialists told us, giving us her name. She is bending a little at the stem, which is a good thing because it means she is holding firm at the roots. "I don't know how long it will last," the specialist added. "It's got to be developing hairline cracks in its heartwood."

"This tree scares me," he said at the beginning of our conversation. He'd seen fifteen trees that day, and ours tied with one other one for "head-scratcher" status. Not only is it unclear how to tie a climber in safely (all the trees close are smaller than Boris, and in the fall path). "Even if I could get a climber safe, I don't actually know how I'd bring this tree down without damage." Boris's branches are entangled about two-thirds of the way up the trunk, which means that once the top is down, there will be nothing to hold him up; and 100 ft of bare trunk (called a spar) will still easily reach Natalie's house.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Stephanie's cousins Josh and Joel, who own a tree removal business called Tree Wise Men, were bored. They bought a grappling crane a year or so ago, and the wind chill in Iowa was forty below, making tree work impossible. (A grappling crane is a crane with a long arm that can both grab and hold a tree trunk, and cut it.) They decided to drive out west with another climber to work on storm cleanup, and help with Boris if the Ladds couldn't find anyone sooner. They had a slow start, needing to melt the frozen diesel in their truck before driving off, and stopping to blowtorch frozen air lines in subzero temperatures. On Saturday January 20th, they were in South Dakota, pushing forward. "Our crane won't reach up the hill to cut the tree. But maybe we can reach it partway and use it to tie a climber in," Joel said. "I'll have to look at it, of course, but think we might be able do this."

We still have a climber crew scheduled for Sunday, January 21st but they're not responding (other arborists think they've gotten cold feet). We've got another possible climber crew scheduled for next week. We've got Josh and Joel in South Dakota. And we've got people who are willing to try to set us up with a crane, or two, or a helicopter, if we haven't gotten it down in a week (and Champ is still champing). No one can get ahold of big cranes in Oregon right now in less than a week (we'd likely need a 200-ton one to come in from the back via Daniel and Samantha's cul-de-sac). Crane companies are not even keeping up with all their voice mails.

And we've got you.

Natalie has contacted her rentor's insurance; Natalie's mom (who owns the house) has contacted her home owner's insurance; we have contacted our insurance company. "Could you help us with a tree removal," we asked "so that we can give you a claim for under $100,000, instead of several hundreds of thousands?"

They all said no. Natalie and her mom's companies claim they do not do tree removal, ever; our insurance says they do not cover "immanent threats," only actual damage. One of the specialists I spoke to, who said the tree was so dangerous he would not put any of his employees on it, said that if it were his he would just let it fall and wait for the insurance to pay out.

We don't want to do that. The tree, we found out in the meantime, would likely fall not only on Natalie's house but on the next house over. Both families are evacuated. We want to get Boris down safely, and we need help.

Will you help us save Champ and Natalie's house?

The actual cost of the removal, as you can tell from the story, is wildly uncertain. If we receive funds in excess of what the removal ends up costing, we will refund the extra. If we need a helicopter removal, it will be $100,000.

One day at a time; and if you've read this far, thank you.