GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Sunday's storms have left Grand Rapids homeowners like Pat Smith with her front yard looking a little worse for wear. After a large branch from a tree toppled onto her house, there's not much she can do since it's owned by the city. Lucky for her, the Grand Rapids forestry team is working around the clock to clear debris from the community.
Smith wasn't expecting the massive branch of a large tree in the front yard of her childhood home in northeast Grand Rapids to topple over during Sunday night's storms.
"Tornado last night, or wind, or whatever, decided to rip apart. Our tree hit the house," Smith said.
Luckily, the damage to her property is minimal.
"We took branches off the roof and, you know, fixed the gutter and the downspout that was kind of wonky," explained Smith.
Because the city of Grand Rapids owns the tree, it's up to them to clear it from her yard.
"I think the best thing to do is to call our 311 line for the city, report that there's a tree down. They have a script that they work off," said Grand Rapids Superintendent of Parks, Joe Sulak.
Sulak said his team is working hard to pick up the pieces of debris that's scattered throughout the city.
"We had a series of trees that were down mostly, although we had damage city wide, it seems like it. The highest is in the east side of Grand Rapids. Trees down, some wrapped in wires. So we're working closely with Consumers Energy to make sure that those wires are taken out and so it's safe to work on and remove," Sulak said.
He said the clean up crew goes where the top priority takes them. They focus first on clearing major roads for vehicles, whether it's EMS or civilian.
"And then we go into trees that are down, blocking sidewalks, block partially barking streets. And then the last ones we usually pick up our you know, that have fallen on property, but they're not blocking anything. They're not on houses and and things like that, you know, parks and cemeteries," said Sulak.
Sulak said it could take three weeks to clean the city.
"Judging on this one, we were lucky in that the trees weren't in full leaf, so the damage is less than say, if it was in the middle of the summer with vegetative debris, you can usually think about two weeks to a month to get a majority of it cleaned up. It just depends this, this, I would say this storm, we are seeing some debris, but it's on the low end," Sulak said.
Luckily, Smith didn't have to wait that long. After FOX 17 interviewed with Sulak, the city's forestry team went to work clearing Smith's front yard, a day after the tree fell.
"Welcome to Michigan, you know," joked Smith.
A shocking start to the severe weather season as they prepare for what's in store.
"A lot of the work that we're doing in the forestry department is preventative work on our trees that have a higher risk. And so what we're doing is we're going city wide, taking branches and that that we consider a priority two, and we're going through and we're taking care of all those this follows up our priority one project we did a couple years ago," said Sulak. "So the hope is that we're in front of it enough that we don't have to deal with these kind of storm debris cleanups."
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