I don't know much about ficus, but I know if someone did this to a silver maple or a ginkgo, it'd be a death sentence for that tree. There's almost no foliage left to even photosynthesize with, and the surface area of the cut ends is massive; it'll take months to seal up those wounds, during that whole time, the tree is losing water. If it managed to survive just the environmental issues (water, heat, light, etc), it'll be extremely vulnerable to diseases and pests. Unless ficus are the tarragon of the tree world, they look to me like they're doomed. Universal should have just cut them down, for all that.