The Town of Normal has collected more storm debris in less than a week than all the waste it hauled away in March.
The town previously said it collected about 3,900 cubic yards of brush, branches, and limbs over the weekend following last Friday's tornadoes. It’s a lot more now — 6,600-plus cubic yards, City Manager Pam Reece said in a Sound Ideas interview.
“In the entire month of March, we collected 3,200 cubic yards. This is more in about 4–5-day period that we've collected in the entire month of March,” said Reece.
The town continues to encourage people to document their damage at the McLean County Emergency Management Agency website. There are links to that on the town's pages as well. Only rigorous accounting of the damage will allow the community to qualify for disaster assistance.
“I'm concerned we might not qualify because the quantity of damages that occurred might not be enough to hit a threshold for state or federal aid, but we're really reliant on McLean County, EMA [Emergency Management Agency] and state emergency management officials to guide us through this process,” said Reece.
She said Mayor Chris Koos has now extended the disaster declaration for seven more days, allowing more time for documentation.
Reece said the town will continue running extra pickup crews on top of the usual waste removal operations through the end of the week and reassess the situation. When road and residential disposal ebbs, She said town crews will turn to damage to public lands and buildings.
“We're going to do is focus on tree removal of trees that fell over in public parks that need attention. Hidden Creek Nature Sanctuary has a very, very large tree, cottonwood I believe, that was just a beautiful tree … and then we had two properties in north Normal that we lease to a farmer, but it's on public ground,” said Reece.
A Quonset hut collapsed and a nearby barn on Ziebarth Road had extensive damage.
All that brush
As part of its landscape waste program, the town usually shreds and chips brush and branches into mulch for free use by area residents.
That practice will continue.
“I can't say what quality of mulch that will result in, because we're not going through any quality control, but ... there will probably be an excessive amount of mulch available,” said Reece.
All those trees
Down the road, Reece said, there will have to be replacement of the estimated hundreds of trees broken by the twisters.
“The town values its status as a Tree City and a Bird City,” said Reece. “We are very concerned about the loss of trees, public and private.”
The town keeps an inventory of the species of trees in parks and on public right-of-way. Reece urged residents to drop an email to the Parks and Recreation Department about the types of trees lost on private property as well.
“We'd like to at least pay attention to that, because of our bird City USA, and Climate and Sustainability plans that we're trying to manage. All that is important, in the hope that we can find ways to replace our lost trees, hopefully with even more plantings,” she said.
