TEMPLE, Texas — From the May tornado, Ceres the company that Bell County hired for clean-up, estimated that that they assisted in cutting up and or trimming 1,000 damaged or fallen trees around the county. What was scheduled to be a six-month undertaking is now completed.
Or is it?
We talked to county officials and residents two months post-tornado to find out where things stand.
It's been a monumental effort by Bell County and nearly 50,000 cubic yards of brush have been cleaned up, but that is over now.
Count Judge David Blackburn told 6 News, "All because of a company called Ceres. We engaged them to come in and help us with brush debris removal. We were able to shave that time down from about six months to about six weeks, which was the objective to get that brush and debris off of the streets."
However, for residents like Allison Roberts who lives close to West Adams, where the tornado hit hardest, they have been frustrated at the lack of visible results in their neighborhood.
"They keep telling us that we are on the schedule, and they should have had three or four cleanups at this point, and we've seen them one time and obviously there is a lot," Roberts said. "We're aware that there's a lot of trash out there.
Bell County Public Information Officer James Stafford met with 6 News anchor Kris Radcliffe to discuss how cleanup efforts went, now that they are done.
"I can remember when we had the Salado tornado a few years ago there was a lot of talk about oh we are so fortunate that it wasn't a highly populated area and that was just not the case this time," he said. "It was very much a populated area with gorgeous trees that were significantly damaged and created a major crisis for us."
Judge Blackburn added, "An unusual or still an unprecedented amount of debris there. Then I would encourage them to call the Road & Bridge department, and we will see what we can do to help them. But again, the idea here is we have left that service and we are now back to normal county services.
The company Ceres says that they made at least two passes at all impacted areas and all of that debris was either chipped or taken to the old Sparks Landfill which was reopened for this, or the Temple Landfill.
The Judge went on to add, "The state allowed us to reopen that landfill for just brush site disposition, we did that to the capacity of what that site would allow. And the remainder then went to the Temple Landfill, so we utilized two different sites an old landfill that had been closed and then had been reopened briefly for this and then the Temple Landfill is where the remaining disposition went."
"But we do know that people are still out here and disposing of it on their own properties and burning seems to be the primary mechanism by which they are doing that," Stafford added.
Despite the frustration of all the damage and needing a new roof, Allison Roberts loves how her neighbors came together!
"Our neighborhood, it was really cool after the storm a lot of our neighbors came together to help each other but we haven't felt the same from the city," Roberts said.
Judge Blackburn told 6 News that if you still have debris or brush concerns it's probably because they don't know about it, so you should contact the county.
If you are in the unincorporated area, you are encouraged to safely burn your debris. However, for those in nearby McClennan County, a burn ban was recently put into effect. However as of Friday Aug. 9th, Bell County has not instated a burn ban.
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