A few weeks ago my neighbor noticed my Hackberry was starting to split at the first big crotch. And the crack appeared to run down the trunk about 8 more feet. You could see light through crack. We called the power company since the left side would take down the power if/when it came down. The right side would have come down right on the neighbor's driveway. (Neighbor has a tree service but didn't want to work around the power lines) Power company came out and scheduled it for removal. Sadly this was the biggest tree on my property. This week it happened. The tree was successfully removed and now starts the CSS'ing. Neighbor said he'd haul it up to my stacks with the clam on the skidsteer. I might need to cut the trunk in half so he can back up the bank onto his driveway. Gonna give the 066 (with 25" bar) a little trigger time on this one. I'll noodle some bowl blanks for myself and the turner's club. And should get some good heat from it in a couple years. Thanks to the BTU gods.
Bummer to hear you lost the tree Tim. Probably not a good time to tell you an arborist could probably have installed cables in it and saved it.
We talked about it. If it was an oak, or something a bit more "valuable" I would have gone the cable route.