Debris pickup left from the wrath of Hurricane Helene could take several months.
Crowder Gulf Senior Project Manager Howard Turner gave the update during an informational video interview Wednesday, October, 23 with City of Waycross Business Integration and Information Systems Director Patrick Simmons.
Crowder Gulf, a family owned business from Mobile, Ala., began pickup Thursday, October 3 in Waycross. Turner said he rode through the area assessing damage and determining the number of trucks needed for clean up.
Once the assessment was completed, Turner sent trucks to the site and contracted with an outside company to create a support team. The support team is hired locally to assist and monitor the debris removal trucks.
This is the second contract with Crowder Gulf. The company cleaned up after Hurricane Idalia, which blew through south Georgia August 30, 2023 as a Category 1 hurricane.
“This storm (Helene) is 10, 15, maybe 20 times what Idalia was last year,” said Turner. “I think we’ve picked up over a hundred thousand cubic yards in the city — about a thousand truck loads. That’s three times what we picked up from Idalia for the county and the city together.
“This is a big event. We’re not going home. We know we’re going to be here a long time. We have operators from Wisconsin, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, you name it. We’re not going to leave until we’re finished.”
Turner designed the collection plan map. “I take a paper map and draw out the districts,” he said. “I try to mimic the voting districts. We want to have a presence in every voting district so each district is covered equally.”
After each district is completed, the trucks will make a second pass. Turner wants the community to be patient and be mindful of the size of the trucks.
“We do not intentionally miss a pile,” he said. “There may be some circumstance, like a wire over head, and we cannot pick it up going in one direction. We’ll turn around and come back and get it.
“Sometimes a truck can’t make a turn into a road because of the angle it’s on so we’ll have to come in another direction.”
Another reason a debris pile may be left is because other refuse is mixed in with the debris.
“In this particular contract, we are picking up only vegetative material- no lumber, no privacy fencing, nothing,” said Turner. “If it is mixed, we’re going to leave that pile. The homeowner is responsible for pulling out that material.”
Simmons said the city will be addressing the removal of non-vegetative refuse following the clean up by Crowder Gulf.
