Gum Trees and High Winds Don't Mix

We've had several days of high winds here - and there has been some excitement with the trees as a result. A very strong windstorm came through on Friday night and the next morning we found this:

(Doubleclick the photo above for a larger image)

A tree above the road had fallen and landed right on the electric wires running to houses on our street. The wires didn't snap, thank heavens, but boy... it didn't look terribly safe.

I rang emergency services to report what had happened, and they forwarded the report to the electric company, saying that situations like this need to be attended to by them (makes total sense to me).  With the sheer volume of calls to them, I was told it would be quite a while before someone would come. 

Only 15 minutes or so later, however, I heard the sound of a chainsaw and looked out to see one of our neighbors carefully slicing at the tree. He was using a chainsaw on a long pole. Bit by bit he cut away the top of it (on the right side in this photo), cutting off 8 inches at a time. Once he was close to the wire, he moved to the left side of the wire and cut through the trunk.  The wire sprung upward, no longer held down by the heavy tree.

The wind continues to howl...