Munster’s August 11 storm damage is nearly cleared away, but residents should expect lingering issues as winter descends, the town’s Public Works team cautioned Monday.
The Town is around 90% cleared of all debris from the derecho at this point, including all parks, Luke Kern, a MS4 employee with the Public Works Department, told the Town Council at its Monday evening meeting. Starting August 19, eight days after the storm, Kern grabbed his iPad and went to work recording on the geographic information system the town uses the damage assessment for which the department is now using the data internally.
That data makes clear one important detail: There wasn’t an area in town that was unaffected by the storm.
“Starting same route that we run our chipper routes because that’s just what my brain knows, I went: starting by the town garage, worked my way and got the north side done, middle section of town, south side,” Kern said, showing a map of the town covered in red and orange dots signifying all the places Public Works employees stopped. “You can see most of what we saw around town was sidewalks that had been heaved because the trees didn’t just break; they uprooted and took everything with it.”
Workers included street signs and sidewalks, curbs and stretches of road damaged from the storm, from the heavy equipment that was brought in or trees falling, Kern said. They also logged water main breaks that happened after uprooted trees broke underground pipes.
In all, the town recorded 408 discrete instances of damage, including 93 sidewalk locations, 82 damaged light poles, and between 20 and 40 streetlights that suffered some sort of damage, Kern said. Munster Fire Chief Mark Hajduk added that the town, with the help of Columbus, Mississippi-based disaster company Looks Great Services, has cleared 296,000 square-yards, or 5,614 truckloads, of debris comprising 4,162 cut limbs and 732 parkway trees taken down.
As for the stumps left behind, Federal Emergency Management Agency rules said that if a tree is more than 24 inches in diameter or is leaning more than 51%, it’s covered under FEMA reimbursement, Public Works Director Brad Baxter said. The contractor the town hopes to use said they’ll grind as many of the 750 stumps that the department’s logged as they can get to before the ground freezes, he said, but work on that will likely continue into the spring.
The department’s work, along with the data collected by Picayune, Mississippi-based debris haul monitoring firm Debris Tech, should speed up the process for the town’s FEMA reimbursement, Kern said, emphasizing that FEMA officials who came to town were “extremely happy” that Munster didn’t just hand them a map and say, “Good luck!” Of the total $10 million the town is expecting to spend on the cleanup, the town is counting on FEMA to cover 75% of it, or $7.5 million, Clerk-Treasurer Wendy Mis told the Post-Tribune Wednesday.
Of the remaining $2.5 million, the state may cover 75% of it, or $1.9 million, leaving $625,000 for the town to cover out of its own pocket, she said.
Baxter and Kern said Public Works is now looking at equipment damages it endured, what they can fix themselves and what they need replaced, such as 26-year-old generators attached to pumping stations. As well, as the weather gets colder, residents are encouraged to alert the town to any issues they come across because they’re expecting the cold weather to bring new issues to the fore, Kern said.
“If you see something, let us know because your eyes are just as good as ours, if not better, because we can’t be everywhere at once,” Kern said.
Residents who need to report felled trees or debris should email [email protected] or call Public Works at (219) 836-6970.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.