Hurricane Helene contractors give update on debris status

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – As concerns grow from residents about the ongoing debris clean-up status, we’re digging deeper into what the city’s plans are and where they stand right now.

We’re officially on day 50 of clean-up in Augusta and Richmond County.

Crews are comfortably picking up and grinding down 35,000 cubic yards per day.

It’s a process they say they’re almost ready to transition to the next phase of clean-up.

The biggest question on everyone’s mind is when all the debris will be picked up in Augusta.

Steve Cassell with ISM Engineering is in charge of the operation in Augusta.

He says despite what you still see on the roads, they are about halfway done.

“We got about 135 trucks here, and it’s going well. But I will say this, everything’s going to be picked up before we go,” said Cassell.

Crews collected and grinded 1.2 million out of the estimated 2 million they’re expecting to bring in.

Cassell says he understands residents’ confusion about trucks being inconsistent in locations.

But he says that’s due to unexpected circumstances that come with this scale of an operation.

“There’s still a lot of utilities down. You know, they’re abandoned utilities, basically, they’re lying in the piles. So, they can’t pull those out. They can’t pull those piles if there’s utilities in it, because it could pull a pole down or something like that,” he said. “We’ve talked to all the drivers. Say you want to get on the street and style the street, there are monitors well, but each truck has a monitor. They’ve got assigned areas that they’re supposed to move through as they go. But you know, they’re also these trucks that are breaking down. They have hydraulic issues at times. So, we’ve had several of them go down.”

It’s a long process crews will need to revisit communities several times depending on what crews face.

“Typically, the stumps would be the last thing we pick up. There’s a special truck for that, and we do have some stump crews that are going around and picking those things up,” said Cassell.

It’s a job bigger than your average garbage route pick-up.

It will be hard to put a definitive timeline on yet, but they’re getting closer to finding out what the end looks like.

“We’ll be finishing up the first pass in a lot of these areas over the next couple of weeks and going to the second pass. So that’ll really determine what our final volume will be,” said Cassell.

Cassell says another challenge for them is the rainy conditions workers are starting to battle through.

Thursday’s weather caused crews to pick up about 10,000 less debris than normal.

But they say they are still on pace with hitting their 90-day clean-up goal to get 100% federal reimbursement.

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