Call your homeowner's insurance company. Even though it's THEIR tree, it's now YOUR responsibility because it's on your property.

Edit: OR, call a tree company and get an estimate before you call your insurance company. Depending on what your deductible is, it may be cheaper to pay out of pocket, yourself, for its removal.

I question if they are your wires or belong to the power company. It they are your lines you must have a large private electrical complex to need so many wires providing the power.

If as I suspect they are the power company's, call them and they will remove the trees at no cost to you.

If all of those lines are going to your private structures you need to call your the home owner's insurance company.

One other point. Do you own the property that the trees are on or is it an easement. If the trees are on the easement owner will clear them.

In our last house we had two large elm trees in the front of our property near the street that appeared to be in our front yard.. They were actually in the city owned easement for the street and were maintained by the city. When one was struck by lightning the city came out and cleaned up the mess.

The power company missed that when they came by. Contact them ASAP: they will be grateful and be out soon to take care of it before it causes a major problem.

Those lower lines are likely the phone & cable companies' so it could be that the electric company wouldn't bother with branches crossing them (I know mine would not)

If its the phone and cable lines you need to call each service and have them come out to fix them. In my area Verizon now uses a third party company for repair work, so it takes longer to get lines fixed, but there is still no charge to the homeowner. Land lines for home phones is not that common anymore, so its not a priority business. The cable company might be a little faster, but you never know.

Bruce

But the point is, whoever’s lines they are, it ain’t at your expense.

This problem hasn't occurred yet, but I want to know if something should be done in advance. The POCO ran an overhead line from a pole on the street to a new one on my property, with a transformer on that pole. From there the power goes underground to my house. But, near the line from the street there is a small cluster of 50' white pines which, if they fell, would break the line; they are about 15' away. Should the POCO cut them down? If they won't, should I have it done at my expense?

They won’t be interested. If they cut down every tree that was within falling distance of a line, they’d be in partnership with a timber company to manufacture the nation’s toilet paper supply.

I live in the Pacific Northwest with trees everywhere and we never cut down standing trees because of theoretical threats to power lines unless the trees are diseased. Power lines here routinely run through all kinds of trees and tall hedges: branches do get strategically trimmed, and occasionally there are outages when branches break unexpectedly. But I don’t understand why you would go to the expense of cutting down healthy trees near the lines based on a rather minor probability of future harm. And, if one of the trees fell and broke the line, the utility will repair it. If the utility has a concern now, which I doubt, they will deal with it. My view: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Thanks, Kudzu, I was hoping for that advice. Since the line was installed by the POCO and goes to the pole they installed (even though it's on my property), I understand it's their responsibility.

If a tree does break the line, would they even know about it, if I don't report it?

mtvhike- Typically utilities are alerted to outages to a house or neighborhood by the people who lose power. I doubt that there is anything in the system that automatically detects failures except when, say, a substation fails.

Thank you all! You have been extremely helpful! Definitely helps.