When Hurricane Ike hit, Clear Lake, Texas, residents were highly concerned about high water.
Now nearly three weeks post-Ike, they’re very worried about fires from the mounds of tree limbs, branches and other debris piled high on their sidewalks and the streets.
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The reason for their anxiety is that it hasn’t rained since Ike, on Sept. 13, and nearly three weeks later the piled mounds are very dry and thus potential fire hazards. Any spark from lawn mowers or passing vehicles can set the mounds on fire.
Several television and radio stations have also
raised the alarm about fires springing up and becoming a danger to nearby houses.
Several streets between Bay Area and El Dorado boulevards have dozens of the mounds, some reaching 6-8 feet in height, and even higher. Joining the mounds on the sidewalks and streets are hundreds of plastic bags filled with branches and leaves.
With city cleanup crews working hard in dozens of locations around Houston, there has been no official word about the exact date of the cleanup, but they may be getting close.
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Several residents voiced their concerns with telephone calls to the city about the cleanup. They weren’t too happy with the answers.
“I called them and asked when would they come and pick all this up,” Oak Brook resident Al Bishop said. “They told me it would be 2-3 months.
“I asked if there was a schedule for pickup in Clear Lake,” he added, thinking maybe he was given an overall timetable. “The lady then repeated the same thing – two to three months."
.However, heavy trucks, equipment and crews were seen in other parts of the area and it was thought that it might not be long before they work their way to the Oakbrook area.
At mid-week trucks and equipment were indeed cleaning up the mouds of limbs and branches.
Longtime Clear Lake resident Tom Farinacci II didn’t like what he saw in the Clear Lake residential areas. Farinacci owns Pro Design Landscaping and called the sight of the mounds a fire risk in the making.
Never mind about being unsightly, he says it’s definitely unsafe.
“It’s very dangerous,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this. You can’t leave it like this for any length of time. It has to be cleaned up soon.”
A former Clear Lake High football player, Farinacci has turned his crews from landscaping to cleanup. He put special crews to work overtime to clean and clear mounds of limbs and branches and put them into a shredder. The sacks can’t be put into the shredder because of the plastic. Last week his crew was about the only one in Clear Lake doing this.
Other areas of Clear Lake are busy with repairing structures that were hard hit during the hurricane. A crew of at least 10 was atop the roof of the Candlewood Suites Hotel on Bay Area Boulevard. Several stacks of shingles were visible on the roof where the men worked.