Woman says crews “butchered” her trees while working to restore power after storm

WOODFORD COUNTY, Ky. (WTVQ)- Kentucky Utilities says all power knocked out in Friday’s storm is back on but one woman says crews did more harm than good.

Sammi Hazen says her farm in Versailles was hit hard during Friday’s storm.

“We had some trees down and two big trees down over there. Some branches and some of that,” said Hazen, owner of PlayMor Farm.

Hazen says it took days for her to get all the debris cleaned up but finally by Tuesday things were getting back to normal until she came home to find this.

“I drove in. I stopped. I couldn’t believe it,” said Hazen.

Hazen says while she was out a crew contracted by Kentucky Utilities came onto her property to make sure the power was working but then started cutting branches off a line of her trees.

“They said that the trees were touching the lines and that they were trimming them. I don’t consider that trimming them. That’s a butcher job,” said Hazen.

Hazen says she’s furious because she had just put the farm on the market, now with the trees cut she doesn’t know how she’s going to be able to sell it.

“KU and I are going to have to sit down and have a discussion about whether it looks good enough that I can continue selling it or what we’re going to have to do about compensation for it,” said Hazen.

A spokesman for Kentucky Utilities says after big storms like the one we had here on Friday the company does receive and uptick in complaints from people complaining about trees chopped down or trimmed.

The spokesman say there isn’t a fix-all, the company has to take those complaints on a case by case basis.

“You can file a complaint and you can say hey I had my tree cut down by your crews can you come take a look and inspect and we will and if we feel like we caused damage not the storm then we’ll fix that for you and we’ll help,” said Daniel Lowry, spokesperson for Kentucky Utilities

That’s exactly what Hazen has done, she says KU is working with her but still she doesn’t know how it can be fixed.

“I hate it because this happened right at the time of the storm and I know people have worked hours and hours and hours on restoring power and doing all that and I appreciate them doing the maintenance and offering to help with it, but it’s not, I can’t fix it,” said Hazen.