The numbers attempting to quantify the severity of the Aug. 11 derecho are staggering.
The strain on municipal resources is obvious.
Portage Mayor Austin Bonta estimated the storm resulted in 500,000 cubic yards of tree debris that needed to be carted off — so much that a private company was contracted to assist.
“The tree damage that occurred in and near Portage, IN, specifically, was particularly extreme,” the National Weather Service reported. “Here, multiple forested areas experienced a greater than 80% loss of their tree canopy, and numerous additional trees in residential areas were uprooted, snapped, or lost a majority of their limbs. Power poles were also snapped on a widespread basis, and several instances of notable structural damage occurred as a result of the extreme straight-line winds here as well.”
Portage Township Schools Superintendent Amanda Alaniz told the School Board on Monday that the district is looking for a contractor to help remove debris. “We’ve trimmed what we can and hauled away what we can,” she said. “There was a lot of damage and a lot of debris.”
Porter County Council President Andy Vasquez said Thursday the county’s cost to fix up, repair and dispose of trees will range from $7.5 million to $11.5 million.
The Porter County Recycling and Waste Reduction had to close compost sites because there was so much debris. This week, it let residents know the county is, like Portage, hiring qualified contractors for large-scale debris collection and removal.
When that process starts, likely in mid-October, the debris will need to be in the public right-of-way — not on roads but alongside them — because federal rules prohibit the county from collecting debris from private property.
Porter County is hoping for Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement.
Anthony Ferraro, an aide to Gov. Mike Braun, told the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission Executive Board on Thursday that FEMA requires a local match of 25%, but the state will cover 75% of that amount, leaving just 6.25% of the total cost to be covered by local governments.
Porter County Recycling and Waste Reduction Executive Director Keri Marrs Barron stood at the closed 27-acre Portage compost site to show the massive mountains of debris. The volume that normally comes in over the course of a year, she said, “we exceeded that volume in less than one month and almost quadrupled that volume,” she said.
More Top Picks Best Rowing Machines For Beginners
By the end of July, the site was cleared of compost. All the material was from the derecho.
That story was repeated at the Valparaiso and Boone Grove sites, too. The Valparaiso site set a record after the storm, with 499 vehicles in one nine-hour day — an average of 67 vehicles per hour, many of them hauling trailers.
“I pretty much stayed here for about two weeks,” she said.
Before the storm, workers from the compost sites asked people where they were from. Name a community in Porter County, and you were good to go. Now, though, with FEMA money involved, residents have to show proof of residency through a utility bill, ID or other means.
A contractor was hired to grind the debris into smaller chunks, about six inches by six inches, to compact the debris so it can be hauled away more efficiently.
There was so much debris piled up that Portage hired a company to use an excavator to reach the top of the piles of debris. The solid waste district’s equipment was too small. “The excavator just kept making this pile higher and higher,” Marrs Barron said.
Marrs Barron said there were many heartfelt stories of neighbors helping neighbors and municipalities helping each other when equipment broke down, with others bringing ice and water for workers at the compost sites.
“They’re of all ages, and you see everybody struggling to pull the material” out of the vehicles, she said, noting that younger people jumped in to help older people who were struggling to empty the vehicles quickly.
Munster
Munster’s Stewart Park typically serves as a place for soccer practices and kids to let off steam at the playground. But since the town was hit by a confirmed tornado and straight-line winds on Aug. 11, the smell of wood chips fills the air as huge piles of debris cover the fields. The branches and logs are then ground up and hauled out of town. Beech Park on the northeast side of town is also serving as a collection point.
Earlier this week, the town posted drone footage on its Facebook page from above Bieker Woods nature preserve, showing large gashes of downed trees in the formerly densely packed preserve as well as across the street at Heritage Park.
As of Monday, firms contracted by the town had processed more than 239,000 cubic yards of material, which is about 79% of the estimated 300,000 cubic yards that the contractors expect to handle, according to Munster spokesperson Sam Nantz. That number doesn’t include the unknown amount of debris handled by the town’s public works employees between Aug. 11 and 21 before the town realized that it needed more help.
On Aug. 20, the town contracted with Columbia, Mississippi-based disaster recovery firm Looks Great Services for hauling and debris-haul monitoring firm DebrisTech out of Picayune, Mississippi.
The town has approved $4.5 million for cleanup so far, but a permanent contract will be presented for consideration at the Munster Town Council’s Sept. 21 meeting. The town also has a disaster management consultant to help them comply with FEMA requirements so that they receive reimbursement, which the town expects to be about 75% of its costs.
Nantz said the town’s contractors have started stump removal for the scores of trees that were uprooted.
Gary
Many in the city of Gary struggled for two weeks or more to get power restored by NIPSCO after the storm. But debris cleanup has happened at a steady clip since Aug. 26, once the city contracted with AshBritt Environmental, according to city of Gary Director of Zoning Corrie Sharp.
According to AshBritt’s website, the company is a “national turnkey rapid-response disaster recovery and special environmental services contractor.”
AshBritt has 15 large trucks collecting curbside vegetative debris and seven smaller trucks managing hazardous trees and stumps. In a statement, Sharp said that the company will make three passes through the city, and its first pass is about 68% complete.
“To date, we have collected nearly 200,000 cubic yards of debris in the public right-of-way,” Sharp said. “We estimate another 100,000 (cubic yards) still remains.”
The contractor aims to have right-of-way debris cleared within the next 30 days, she said.
According to a graphic provided to the Post-Tribune, residents are told to separate waste into vegetative and construction debris. Separate collection passes will be made for each type.
Residents are asked to keep piles organized at their curbs, take photos before collection for insurance purposes, move vehicles off the street and not to mix debris types.
All debris is sent to a site off Melton Road, according to the graphic.
When asked how Gary’s cleanup compares to surrounding communities, Sharp said “no clue” because they are “not tracking other cities’ progress.”
The city is receiving cleanup help from local, state and federal agencies, Sharp said in her statement.
“We are working diligently to meet the state and federal guidelines for storm recovery reimbursement programs,” Sharp said. “(Federal Emergency Management Agency) is currently in Lake County taking inventory of all Lake County damage. Locally, we are hoping to work with the Little Calumet River Basin on a cost-sharing program.”
More Top Picks Samsung Bespoke Jet
INDOT
The Indiana Department of Transportation is continuing to work on the post-derecho cleanup, said Adam Parkhouse, director of stakeholder engagement with INDOT’s LaPorte District.
A couple of weekends ago, crews from other INDOT districts helped clear debris out of the roadways. “That will be ongoing for a while,” he said.
“There’s quite a bit of debris on U.S. 12 still, and quite a bit of it is mixed in with wires and poles,” Beverly Shores Town Council President David Phelps told him during the NIRPC meeting.
“Does INDOT look at potential problems with trees that are near the highway?” Phelps asked. “A lot more trees continue to fall after the storm because they were weakened.”
INDOT is taking note of questionable trees to remove them, Parkhouse said. That happened with a tree that once hung over U.S. 20, and INDOT is still taking heat from it.
“We do try to be proactive” if a tree looks like it’s dying or could be a risk, Parkhouse said. He encouraged local officials to notify INDOT.
Aug. 11’s storm by the numbers
The storm’s toll isn’t limited to debris removal, however.
Portage Police Chief Michael Candiano told the City Council earlier this month that police earned an additional 611 hours of overtime pay for storm-related service. That doesn’t count administrators, who worked 16-hour days for four days straight but are salaried and not eligible for overtime pay.
“The number of calls handled by the fire department was unprecedented,” Portage Fire Chief Chris Crail said. One crew handled 213 calls for service, including the house explosion that claimed the life of Leona Rice, as well as numerous structural collapses.
Normally, the fire department responds to 400 to 500 calls for service per month. In August, it was more than 1,100.
The National Weather Service has a post-storm recap on its website. The agency said eight tornadoes were generated during the storm, including an EF1 that left a 22.5-mile trail of destruction from Orland Park, Illinois, to Hammond. A more powerful EF2 tornado basically ran a marathon, a 26.2-mile stretch from Monee, Illinois, to Crown Point.
Two people were killed in Northwest Indiana by the storm. An unhoused woman in Gary was struck by debris during the storm, in addition to Rice, who died when her house exploded.
But straight-line winds in the 100 to 110 mph range caused extensive damage across portions of northern Lake and Porter counties.
Some portions of Northwest Indiana were without power for two weeks.
Grace Benninger, a NIRPC spatial analyst, offered even more numbers Thursday.
On Aug. 11, the day of the storm, about 243,000 NIPSCO customers were without power. As damage assessments expanded, the outage count increased to more than 301,000 affected customers, eventually reaching about 317,000 at peak impact. Over the course of the recovery effort, total outage incidents exceeded 374,500.
The disaster – multiple local, state and federal governments declared an official state of emergency – initially drew more than 1,200 personnel from outside the region. Ultimately, more than 4,000 workers from 14 states responded.
Not until Aug. 15 were there more customers with power restored than there were outages, Benninger said. Only on Aug. 26, 15 days after the storm, did NIPSCO declare restoration to be substantially complete.
Indiana 211, which connects people to available resources, reported 10,601 disaster report calls from Lake County and 1,620 from Porter County, she said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.