GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – It’s been about a week since several tornadoes tore through northeast Wisconsin.
The west side of Green Bay and neighboring communities were hit the hardest.
This is the second of seven trees Jonathon Thomas with Harvey Construction is taking down Tuesday in Howard.
“Horrendous, it’s overwhelming because there are so many trees to cut down,” said Thomas.
He says most tree services are in the same spot.
“We’re turning people down, we’re booked through summer,” said Thomas.
Leaving it to residents like Ethan Schetter to gear up and help with cutting.
“Of course, we need a professional to come in because I don’t know half a clue of what I know what I’m doing,” said Schetter.
If you drive down streets like Riverview Drive in Howard you’ll see piles after piles of brush lined up. Residents say as they keep cleaning up, the stacks just get higher.
“We have two crews running out full time, 10 hours a day,” said Village of Howard Public Works Director Geoffrey Farr.
Farr says the village is working with FEMA and says the damage assessment is over $100,000 so far.
Of that, Farr says brush collection is costing the village $4-5,000 a day.
And it will cost more than $20,000 dollars to grind up the brush behind him to make wood chips.
“It’s going to take at least two weeks for us to get the first round done. Then after, because of pent-up demand it could be three weeks it could be four,” said Farr.
City of Green Bay Public Works says it won’t be done with clean-up for at least a couple of weeks either.
Street supervisor Josh Brassfield says residents can help out by dropping off their own brush at the yard waste sites.
He says the city has already picked up 300 loads of brush and debris since Thursday.
“We’ve probably got over 750 man-hours and equipment hours. It’s a lot of resources that are being spent on this,” said Brassfield.
The city will likely double the loads by the time it’s done.
Schetter says he’s thankful the damage wasn’t worse. But he still wishes the tree on his shed and sticks in his yard could disappear.
“Try to get it done as soon as possible so you can go back to life how it is,” said Schetter.
For more information on brush pick-up for Northeast Wisconsin municipalities click below:
