Last week's thunderstorms won — if you can call it winning — over April tornadoes in at least one category of destruction measured by the Town of Normal.
City Manager Pam Reece said crews have been working hard to haul away debris.
"They've collected over 10,700 cubic yards of brush and debris. That's 580 truckloads since Thursday,” said Reece on Wednesday.
Reece said the waste created from a single windy rainy afternoon and weekend flooding is more than 30% above the curbside landscape waste hauled in a regular month. June had a total collection of about 7,000 cubic yards of waste.
“It is significantly more than the entire month of April when we were hit with a tornado," said Reece.
The Normal city manager also gave staff a pat on the back for the response to last Thursday's severe thunderstorms. Reece said staff in Police, Fire, Public Works and Parks and Recreation have done “incredible work” to help the town recover.
“How quickly do we get streets blocked off? How quickly are we making sure that the public safety departments can get where they need to go? Police and fire called in their extra crews right away. The police department had everybody on the street blocking off streets very quickly. Public works responded immediately. They were able to block off streets,” said Reece.
She said, unfortunately the town has had several occasions to practice disaster responses this year and for this one put some improvements into practice. In a time-saving move, Public Works sent trucks out in tandem after the weather event.
“One was a knuckle boom. One was a dump truck ... to have the knuckle boom truck fill up a dump truck, fill up its own back bed, and then they could go empty and come back. It's being more efficient in clearing things up afterwards,” said Reece.
On Wednesday, the town re-started its more typical curbside collection. She said that's important because many people were out of power for multiple days when there was a flooding event.
“Which means a lot of people's basements got wet and they have materials to dispose of,” said Reece.
The town is still not providing landscape waste collection curbside because those crews continue to focus on brush and debris. She said that is likely to resume next week for all materials on all routes.
Reece said the drain on staff will not affect this weekend’s Sweet Corn Circus festival in Uptown.
