The sheer volume of the vegetative debris, which raises both fears of fire and flood, also poses a major challenge.
A collaborative of tree service companies are bringing trees and brush blown down by the June 1 tornado to a field on Boston Road near Post Office Square in Wilbraham.It’s the wrath of nature.
Fallen trees, uprooted stumps and tangles of limbs and branches continue to speak to the fast-moving horrors that carved a deadly 39-mile path of destruction from Westfield to Monson and Brimfield and beyond.
The sheer volume of the vegetative debris, which raises both fears of fire and flood, also poses a major challenge.
How best to get rid of the stuff?
Richard K. Sullivan Jr., secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said the state will be working with the tornado-torn cities and towns to find ways to dispose of, or recycle, the debris.
“The governor has directed me to work with cities and towns to see exactly where they are on debris removal,” said Sullivan, a former mayor of Westfield, who lives a short distance from where the first of the tornadoes touched down on that sweltering-turned-stormy afternoon on the first of June.
Officials need to be creative as they face their communities’ wide-varying needs, topographies and degrees of damage, Sullivan said.
“The first response of the communities have been phenomenal, but now the problems they are facing are very different problems,” he said. “The next phase of the cleanup operation is going to be very individualized community by community.”
Most of the debris from tornado-damaged buildings is going into landfills, at least for now. John L. Grossman, manger of marketing and sales at EcoBuilding Bargains in Springfield, the former ReStore, said contractors are prioritizing buildings that were so heavily damaged in tornadoes that they have to be demolished. But those structures that needed to be dealt with immediately were just too unstable for the recycling crews.
“We just don’t send them into unsafe structures,” he said. “The whole thing can just come down on top of you, especially once you start trying to salvage the building materials. It’s pretty intensive to take a house apart stick-by-stick.”
He added that in many case residents are not able to go back inside for their personal property.
Demolishing the building ends up damaging materials that might have been recycled. Also it’s too labor intensive and dangerous to try and pull objects from a pile of twisted debris.
But there might be more opportunities to recycle as work moves from demolition to renovation, Grossman said.
“When the time comes, we’ll start looking for homes that are safe to get into. The low-hanging fruit would be kitchen cabinets, doors, plumbing and bathroom fixtures,” he said. “We would love the opportunity to take an entire house apart and recover the plumbing and the hardwood floors.”
Bruce B. Robinovitz, president of R& R Industries, a scrap metal dealer on Rocus Street in Springfield, said he’s offered to bring trailers to impacted communities and buy scrap from homeowners on the spot, saving them the hauling fee. No municipalities have taken him up on the offer as of yet.
In the meantime, he’s getting people bringing in small loads of aluminum siding or wrecked appliances but little else.
“All the real demolition work is just getting started,” he said. “And all the larger buildings that would have structural metal in them are still tied up in insurance.”
A typical homeowner brings in 20-or so pounds of aluminum worth about 60 cents a pound.
To deter looting, Rabinovitz said he checks identifications and always asks where people got the materials they try to sell.
Springfield, Wilbraham and Monson, among those hardest hit, have contracted with Ashbritt Environmental, a Florida-based contractor on the state’s master services list, to handle the removal of trees and other tornado-related debris from public properties.
Springfield continues to deal with “tens of thousands of trees” that were damaged or destroyed amidst its urban and suburban neighborhoods and park lands, city forester Edward P. Casey said.
Ashbritt is chipping those trees at staging areas near Cathedral High School and on Arnold Street, and Ashbritt vendors are hauling it out of the city.
Some day, Casey said, the chips will likely be used as low-grade commercial mulch, “but, at this point, there is no market for it.”
The work is being monitored by another company, O’Brien’s Response Management, which ensures that Ashbritt remains in compliance with guidelines for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.
Needless to say, much of the damage in the City of Homes’ tree-stripped neighborhoods and elsewhere, will leave lasting scars for years and decades to come. “The storm has done damage in the short-term that is irreversible,” Casey said.
Patrick J. Sullivan, director of parks, buildings and recreation management for Springfield, said the city plans to have aerial photographs taken this week to get a better idea of tree and other damage.
After that, work will begin on preparing a master plan for the “re-greening” of the city and getting it to Mayor Domenic J. Sarno later this summer.
Gretchen E. Neggers, Monson town administrator, said Ashbritt has been working well with her town. “They seem to be very efficient,” she said. “They seem to know what they are doing.”
Monson highway surveyor John Morrell said the town is still concentrating on removing tree debris from the side of the roads. “I’d say we are 50 to 60 percent done,” he said.
Like just about everyone else in this stage of recovery, Morrell could not provide any estimates on tree damage. “We had a lot,” he said.
One issue that Monson still needs to address is tree debris that clogs Chicopee Brook and creates the potential for flooding. “A beaver couldn’t have put that in there any better,” he said.
Edmund W. Miga, Wilbraham’s public works director, said his town’s tree belt work is about 70 percent complete. “It’s incredible,” he said of the damage. “My heart goes out to the people.”
Ashbritt, as of Thursday, had processed 53,700 cubic yards of tree waste, according to Miga.
A site at Post Office Park off Boston Road in Wilbraham is being used as a staging site for the collection of trees and brush by Ashbritt, Wilbraham Town Administrator Robert A Weitz said. Weitz said Ashbritt will be taking trees, brush and building debris moved by residents from their property to the tree belts in town for up to 60 days from the date of the June 1 tornado.
In Brimfield, selectwoman Diane Panaccione said the town has entered into a contract, worth $408,400, with the Jennifer M. Cook Co. to remove roadside tree debris. The work, which began Thursday, is expected to last two to three weeks
Sullivan said he recently talked with Brimfield officials to address plans to start a site at the Brimfield State Forest where residents can bring tree debris. “We need a lay-down area,” he said.
An estimated third of the trees in the 3,600-acre Brimfield State Forest have been damaged, and the situation there continues to be assessed by state Division of Conservation and Recreation personnel, Sullivan said.
Three of the state forest’s seven buildings were destroyed by a tornado, and the state is exploring the possibility of milling some of the fallen trees to create board lumber for rebuilding the blasted structures, the secretary said.
“We are looking at reusing the assets, whenever appropriate, as much as we can,” Sullivan said.
Robinson State Park in Agawam was also hit hard by the tornado as it moved from Westfield through Agawam and into West Springfield, according to Sullivan.
John Dwinnell, district manager for the Department of Conservation & Recreation, said the assessment includes whether there are enough downed trees in good enough shape for milling. A complicating factor, he said, is that many of the trees were twisted when they were blown over by the tornado.
Sullivan said talks are ongoing with those in the tree removal and logging businesses to see if they can be compensated for removal efforts in part by keeping the trees that they salvage for lumber or cordwood.
Some of the tree debris may be sent to a biomass facility in Fitchburg or similar out-of-state facilities, Sullivan said.
Replanting has been discussed at the state level as well, Sullivan said.
“Monson is a really good example, they lost every tree in their downtown,” he said. “When the time come we will work with the communities to get their trees replanted.”
State and federal grants and the Urban Tree Program will be likely tapped for replanting, he said.
Westfield Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said his city has so far chipped some 80,000 square yards of tree debris and probably has some 20,000 to 30,000 square yards to go. T.J. Bark Mulch, of Southwick, has agreed to take on the mulch at no cost to Westfield, Knapik said.
“Basically we are just offering to do it as an neighborly thing to do,” said Tyler Oleksak, co-owner of T. J. Bark Mulch.
Westfield residents, meanwhile, have until July 1 to haul their tree debris to the side of the street for free removal by the city.
West Springfield just finished up tree removal and chipping operations within its tornado devastated areas at a cost of nearly $129,000, said public works director John L. Dowd said.
The 90-odd trees that fell within a two-mile area centered in the Merrick section have all been chipped by a private contractor, which has been leasing the transfer station from the city, Dowd said.
The tree removal effort was boosted by crews from the city of Holyoke who spent four days there. “They just showed up,” Dowd said. “Certainly, I would have done the same thing.”
As to who foots the final bill, “We are all at the mercy of FEMA,” Dowd said.