CADILLAC - Emergency management workers and local leaders were in Northern Michigan to assess the needs of communities still dealing with the impact from the powerful March ice storms.
The director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and the Otsego County Emergency Manager were on hand to review the devastation still left behind.
they even extended the emergency declaration to help keep support in place.
There’s an enormous amount of wood still out there. A lot of it could be reused. and, they’re going to continue to need support from state and local government.
EGLE Director Phil Roos said they have decided to extend the emergency declaration until September 12th.
“I did a pretty thorough tour a few weeks ago, and I didn’t see a piece of property in the area that didn’t have damage. I saw big swaths of forest that were obviously severely damaged. It’s a big deal,” said Roos.
That keeps vegetative storm debris disposal stations open for an additional 90 days.
Otsego County emergency manager Jon Deming said it’s critical to get the debris picked up for safety reasons.
“There’s a lot of debris on and a lot of trees that came down during the storm. We need to get them cleaned up, get them away from the residents so that we don’t have major fire problems,” said Deming.
Deming said the sooner the better
“It’s kind of a race against the clock here. getting it in here before you have bug infestations or fires that start,” said Deming.
105th district state representative Ken Borton said he’s grateful that EGLE took up the invitation to come out and survey the area
“We just wanted EGLE to take a look at the magnitude of what’s going on here, because, at one point, they wanted, to stop allowing this process to go on Memorial Day weekend,” said
Borton said the extension will help the communities that are still struggling.
“A lot of people were pretty upset about that because there’s no way they would have enough time to get their properties cleaned up,” said Borton.
Lifelong Gaylord resident Jim Hodges, made a trip to the disposal site because of what he thought was the deadline.
“We thought today was going to be the last day that the dump site would be open. So we took the day off of work to try to get the massive pile we have in our front yard under control,” said Hodges.
Hodges said clean up has been a big job and the extension will definitely be helpful for most, even if the task is daunting.
“Just one trailer load at a time, you know, Rome wasn’t built in the day. We’re not going to clean this up in a day,” said Hodges.
