Treat any tree on a power line as energized and stay well back — at least 30 feet. Call 911 first if there's fire or injury; otherwise report it to BGE at 877-778-2222, day or night. No tree company, ours included, will touch a tree in contact with a line until BGE de-energizes or clears it. BGE frees its equipment and restores service at no charge; cleanup of the tree on your property, and repairs to the mast and weatherhead on your house, are the homeowner's side of the line.
Of all the storm-damage situations we respond to in Howard County, this is the one where the first move matters most — and the one where people most often do something dangerous in the first five minutes. So before anything else: a line on the ground, or a tree leaning into one, is live until BGE says it isn't. No sparking, no humming, no visible damage means nothing. Wet wood conducts. Wet ground conducts in a ring around the contact point. And automated equipment can re-energize a dead line without warning.
The order of calls
911 first if anything is burning, anyone is hurt, or a line is down across a road or on a vehicle with someone inside. (If that's the situation: they stay in the vehicle until utility crews kill the line. The car is safe; stepping out is what kills.)
BGE second: 877-778-2222, answered around the clock, for any downed wire or tree-on-line contact. If you smell gas as well — a falling tree can shear a meter or service line — that's a separate BGE emergency number, 877-778-7798, and you make that call from outside the house.
A tree company third, and only for what happens after. This is the part that surprises people: you cannot hire your way to the front of this line. No legitimate crew — ours included — will put a saw or a climber anywhere near a tree in contact with an energized line. Line-clearance work within ten feet of energized conductors is legally restricted to specially certified crews, which is why the sequence is always BGE makes it safe, then the tree crew takes over.
Who owns which wire
Where the bill lands depends on which piece of hardware the tree hit, so it's worth thirty seconds to learn the anatomy. The lines running pole to pole, and the service drop from the pole to your house, belong to BGE. The weatherhead and mast — the pipe and fitting where that drop attaches to the building — belong to you, as does the meter enclosure and everything past it. And any line running from your meter out to a detached garage, shed, or well pump is entirely yours.
The practical consequences: a tree on the pole-to-pole lines or the service drop is BGE's repair, at no cost to you. A tree that tore the mast off the side of the house is a licensed electrician's job on your dime — BGE will not reconnect service until that homeowner-side hardware is repaired and inspected, which makes the electrician the critical path to getting your power back. A tree on the line to your detached garage never involves BGE at all beyond making sure it's dead.
Who pays for what
BGE clears its equipment and restores service free — but its crews cut only what's needed to free the line. They will leave the trunk sectioned in your yard and the canopy where it fell. Debris and the rest of the tree are yours.
Your homeowners policy picks up structure damage — the mast repair, the roof the tree grazed on the way down — and tree removal connected to that structural damage, subject to your deductible and the debris sublimits we cover in the insurance guide. A tree that took out only the line and hit nothing insured is usually an out-of-pocket cleanup.
If it was a neighbor's tree, Maryland's act-of-God rule applies just as it does for houses and cars: each owner handles their own damage unless the tree was a documented hazard the owner ignored. A dead tree standing over a service drop is about as documentable as hazards get — if that describes the tree next door right now, the notice-and-assessment playbook is worth running this week, not after the outage.
Before the next storm
BGE runs its own vegetation-management program and trims around its distribution lines on a cycle — you can report a tree that's grown into pole-to-pole lines and they'll evaluate it, free. But their program protects their equipment on their schedule. The tree leaning over your service drop, the dead limb above the line to the garage — those are yours to manage, and they are emphatically not DIY pruning jobs: homeowner contact with a line during tree work is one of the most reliably fatal accidents there is. We plan removals and pruning around service drops routinely — coordinating a temporary BGE disconnect when the work requires it — and a scheduled job beats an outage, a fried mast, and an emergency extraction by a very wide margin.
Storm put a tree into your lines? Once BGE has made it safe, we handle the rest — removal, cleanup, and the paperwork your adjuster wants. 24/7: 410-826-9006, serving all of Howard County.
Frequently asked questions
Who do you call when a tree falls on a power line in Maryland?
Call 911 first if there is fire, injury, or immediate danger. Otherwise call BGE's emergency line at 877-778-2222, which is answered 24/7, to report the downed line or tree contact. Do not call a tree company first — no reputable crew will touch a tree in contact with a line until the utility has de-energized or cleared it.
Does BGE remove trees that fall on power lines?
BGE clears the tree from its own equipment — enough to make the line safe and restore service — but it does not haul away the debris or remove the rest of the tree from your property. Cleanup after BGE has made the scene safe is the property owner's responsibility, which is where a tree service comes in.
Is a downed power line always dangerous even if nothing is sparking?
Yes. A downed or tree-draped line can be fully energized while lying silently on wet grass, and the ground around it can carry lethal voltage in an expanding ring. Lines can also be re-energized remotely by automatic equipment. Keep everyone at least 30 feet away and treat every line as live until BGE confirms otherwise.