A month after Helene, Augusta residents put up with huge piles of wood lining city streets

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A month after Helene, Augusta residents put up with huge piles of wood lining city streets

Trees piled alongside roads have become a prominent feature in most Augusta neighborhoods.

In some areas the stacks of trunks, limbs, twigs and leaves extend out into the roadways, blocking lanes of traffic, covering sidewalks and spilling onto residential lawns.

The piles of wood are all that is left of what were the trees that provided shade for the homes in nearly every neighborhood in Richmond and Columbia counties.

But the force of Hurricane Helene in September reduced the stately oaks and pines into piles of rubble that nearly a month later still await the crews that were hired to come remove them.

Candace Slavens looked out Monday at the heap of wood lined up along the street in front of her home on Walton Way and recounted where each of the trees once stood in her yard.

She estimated six trees in her yard were blown over, and parts of other trees were also damaged. Some of the trees blown over in her neighborhood were more than 100 years old, she said.

Slavens, who has lived her entire life in Augusta, said this is the worst damage she has ever seen in her hometown.

“The only thing close to it was the ice storm in 2014, and we thought that was just awful. But evidently it doesn’t compare to this,” she said.

Like others The Augusta Chronicle spoke to Monday, Slavens said she has not heard from city or county officials about when the rubble will be hauled off.

“Look at it. I don’t know whether it’s coming or going,” Slavens said of the large pile of logs and limbs.

An official with Ceres Environmental, the Florida company contracted to remove debris, said earlier this month he estimated there are about a million cubic yards of downed trees to truck off in Columbia and Richmond counties.

The Chronicle did not receive replies after it left messages with the company this week to find out where trees are being picked up and how long the firm expects the job will take to complete.

City officials said they began collecting debris on Oct. 11, and over the past weekend the city’s contractors hauled off 80,000 cubic yards of tree trash. Since work began, crews have removed about 360,000 cubic yards of debris, according to a city news release.

The damage at area golf courses and other locations around the city also was extensive. Some of the golf clubs reported that Mother Nature blew over thousands of trees during the storm, which had wind speeds of more than 80 mph.

Hundreds of families were displaced by the hurricane that blew through the Southeast, causing widespread flooding and wind damage that could cost up to $30 billion to repair, according to USA Today.

The storm wreckage is not going away quickly. Some areas of Walton Way were reduced to one lane in either direction by the piles of brush that spilled out into the roadway. Slavens said she hadn’t been leaving the house much since Hurricane Helene hit on Sept. 27.

‘It’s been scarred:’

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The high winds blew over a tree that blocked Slaven’s garage, trapping her car. Once the tree was removed, though, she faced another obstacle. It was difficult to pull her car out onto the street. Slavens said she has her son pull her car out onto Walton Way because she can’t see around the large piles of trees stacked along the edge of the roadway.

Bowe Strickland, who lives a short distance away, said eight of the trees on his property in the Walton Way neighborhood were damaged and had to be removed. They also were piled up in front of the home his grandfather built in 1940.

Eight trees were blown over or suffered some breakage on the property. Strickland said that altogether the trees represented about 500 years of history.

There was some damage around his home from falling trees and branches, but Strickland said he felt fortunate things weren’t worse. The pile of debris in front of his home wasn’t worth complaining about, he said.

“Compared to what a lot of people in Augusta and particularly Asheville (North Carolina) are dealing with, this is nothing,” Strickland said.

Mary Helen McDonough had a pile of limbs several feet high stretching across most of the front of her property in the Highland Avenue area. It covered the sidewalk, part of her lawn and went beyond the gutter and covered a portion of the street.

The rest of McDough’s front lawn was neatly trimmed and mowed, but she was reluctant to complain about the disorganized pile of limbs. She said she had some damage from falling trees and limbs on her property but they did not hit her home.

“When I talk to people who’ve lost everything, this is a minor inconvenience for me,” she said. “I’m obviously thankful that nothing hit my house, so it’s hard to complain about debris.”

The long pile of debris also gave her an idea, as it had been a buffer between her home and the traffic on the street. She said she might consider planting a hedge in front of her home, as a replacement buffer, after the wood is hauled off, she said.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle:

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