HMI members respond to Hurricane Irene

CARY, N.C. – HMI announced that companies from its Authorized Member (AM) Network provided more than 100 tree crews to assist homeowners in recovering from the effects of Hurricane Irene. Several AMs contributed crews including (listed alphabetically) Arborist Enterprises, Arbor Masters, Bartlett Tree Experts, Caldwell Tree Care, Cicoria Tree, CW Arborists, Davey, Grimshaw Tree, RTEC, SavATree, Tamke Tree Experts, The Care of Trees, among others, and HMI responded to more than 1,500 requests for emergency tree removals in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

In addition, 15 crews were deployed under HMI's First Responder Program (FRP) to work exclusively for policy holders of one of the nation's largest insurance companies. HMI's FRP provides its insurance clients with dedicated tree removal resources. It also offers its AMs a way to deploy into a disaster zone as their mobilization costs are covered and work on-site is streamed directly to the field by the insurance carrier.

"Even before Irene hit, we were asked to deploy crews all along the East Coast in preparation for this major event," said Doug Malawsky, executive vice president and COO of HMI. "Our AMs and affiliates performed amazingly and generated over $2,000,000 in work. We received over 1,500 calls during the course of the first few days following the hurricane and our network once again proved to the insurance industry the value of working with professional and qualified tree care companies."