LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Trees play a vital role in this world and can live up to decades while providing oxygen, paper, and shade for our yards and parks.
However, several trees took a new stance from standing straight up to laying flat on the ground after the March 31st tornado along with damaging winds that took place recently on Wednesday afternoon.
"These events that we've had, this windstorm, this tornado we had, are going to affect these trees for decades," said Dr. Vic Ford, Associate Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Ford said that trees are similar to humans— one disaster like the one we've experienced doesn't lead to the demise of all trees. Instead, the destruction builds up over time, as trees can live a very long life.
"If we get a serious illness or a chronic illness, and something else comes in, and something else builds up over a period of time and it wasn't one thing or another thing that leads to our demise," Ford explained.
This led to a busy week for JRC Tree Services owner, Michael Beene, and his crew as they've worked tirelessly chopping down several trees in the neighborhood.
"We're actually doing cleanup on the high winds that come through a week ago," Beene said.
Trees can weigh a ton, so you can imagine the heavy-duty tools they have to use to get the job done.
"On a job like this, we got the skid steer with with clamp bucket so we can pick up the really large trees. We had a boom lift that we use to clean to get as high as we possibly can get and then we had to get out and climb the rest of it so it's easily just two machines is a $1000 a day," Beene described.
Despite all the damage that trees can cause when they fall, how do we turn a disaster like we've experienced back into a masterpiece?
"Being able to take care of them, to protect them to protect them, and being able to understand that, it's not gonna be an overnight process," Ford said.
According to Ford, it's going to take all hands on deck to restore the damage done.
"Being able to recognize the soil changes being able to recognize what species you can adapt where and it's just a matter of replanting to me, I would rather sit and plan out what my forest will look like 10 years from now 20 years from now," he added.
Although tornados and storms are part of the cycle of life, Ford said they bring beauty and new beginnings for generations to come.
"They've actually started calculating natural occurrences of these bars, these stuck to disturbances and they are very common and that's how these these these trees get regenerated, you get you get trees grow up and be big," he said.