I'm not familiar with aspens, are they susceptible to wind?
Aspen are a Western tree. In fact, the largest living organism in the USA is an aspen grove in Colorado. Aspen grow from sending out shoots from their roots, and they are a pain in the ... My neighbors and I would love to have them all gone, although it would take years to kill off the roots. They mess up our lawns and flower beds something awful. That being said, they don't normally have a problem with winds, but this one was 45' tall and had a pretty big sail in some very strong winds. My arboralist was out today and said it was abnormal, it shouldn't have fallen, that will be $1200 to clean up, thank you. Still his advice is not to pull the remaining ones, much as I'd like to. They were planted by the folks who had the place before me, so they're not native, and some day I'm going to get tired of messing with them and spend the bucks. Thing is I just had them out to trim all the trees and clean up the property.
I wouldn't have them come out, but that's a lot of branches to get rid of and they won't let us burn. Normally when I trim I just set a fire in the pit and throw the small stuff on it as I'm cutting it up. This is going to give me a years firewood, but it's not cheap having them do it.
What's kind of strange is we were standing around looking at the work and a Coopers hawk came right down into one of the trees and sent all the other birds (robins, flickers, et al, about 20 of them) out like a gunshot. He sat for a few and then flew off right past us. That was unusual.
One last Aspen note; these are often called Quaking Aspen as the leaves shimmer in the slightest wind. There's an old story that says Christ's cross was made from Aspen, and that's why they shake. Fact is they're a New World tree. The cross is much more likely to have been cedar, which Lebanon was famous for (back when all that part of the world was actually forested). Egyptians loved using Lebanese cedar for their burial and incense rituals.