Posted on 05/10/2006 12:30:13 PM PDT by WestTexasWend
Katrina left a lot of pine trees standing, but brown and lifeless.
"Eighty to 100 percent of the trees were inundated with storm surge waters from Katrina as much as 12 miles inland and that has posed some serious threats to our public safety," Hancock County Extension Service Director Gwen Smith said.
The dead trees are still standing because they don't meet the guidelines for removal. Only trees with broken tops or those leaning at a 30 degree angle can be removed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineer debris crews.
County Supervisor David Yarborough says that's left many properties in danger.
"Last weekend we had substantial wind. I know of several cases where trees fell and just missed FEMA trailers. Something has to be done, we need help with this."
Even if the county took down the dead trees, FEMA paid crews won't haul them away.
"If this would have been done in the ROE process, people wouldn't have this financial burden looking them in the eyes," Yarborough said.
Pine beetles, termites and the fire hazard the dead trees pose are also big concerns.
"Just the pure volume that we have that are dead and brittle, they will easily catch fire. And it's very difficult to stop a fire once it starts," Smith said.
To reduce the risk and expense, Mississippi State's Extension Service is bringing arborists to help assess the damage and danger.
"They will actually be walking the streets, they will GPS individual trees and they will do an assessment first and foremost to determine the affects on public safety. In other words they're going to deal with the trees that are closest to the roads, closest to the right of way," Smith said.
The next step will be getting federal dollars and resources to get rid of the hazardous trees. Extension Service leaders say the damage tree risk assessment should be finished within two to three months.
MS ping
I spent most of the day ribboning trees for takedown. But not from Katrina; from road salt killing them.
I am betting the general public would take care of the problem if they were just allowed to take the "free firewood"... I have said the same thing here in Arizona where we have a problem with the bark beetle killing off our pine trees. Used to be that way up in Oregon when I was a kid, we used to go cut our own firewood all the time and clean up the forests!
Oh, so THAT's what those ribbons I collected were for! I thought Code Pink was here!......
That is a great idea! If the crews would take them down and put the logs in a pile, they'd likely be GONE in 24-48 hours. You'd have folks coming by getting truckloads of them. Might even attracts some 'ontamanures' who would look to split the logs and sell the firewood later on in the year. Why not? If they're willing to do the work picking the stuff up and hauling it away, more power to them!
"The dead trees are still standing because they don't meet the guidelines for removal."
That pretty well sums up the entire Katrina debacle.
You don't want untrained people dropping trees around people, cars, houses and power lines. Bad Idea.
As an untrained person who's cut a LOT of firewood over the years, there are a surprisingly large number of things that can go wrong.
No, I agree, I would not have them actually falling trees, just cleaning it up... Instead of sending somebody out to tag trees to be cut, they could just drop them and leave them, or drag into large piles. We were only allowed to take stuff that was already down and there were forestry officials making rounds to verify nothing green was being taken. Piles I remember were HUGE, maybe 20 or 30 people cutting wood out of the same pile. Back then alot of clearcutting and much of what they cut could not be sold as usable timber.
It does make a good firewood (when split) to sell at family campgrounds, where pine will burn hot, fast, and make sparks -- everything you associate with vacation evenings outdoors.
Dead trees seldom fall down -- particularly hardwoods. The trees die from the top, drop branches, and can take more than a decade to drop to a ten-foot high stump.
On my acre of forest, I have several "snags", which I let the woodpeckers have, then the songbirds nest in the cavities. The routine (and uneccesary) cutting down of snags has caused a decline in Flicker populations (an ant-eating woodpecker).
In the past 50 years, there have been no "calamitous-collapse" issues with dead trees here.
Leave 'em stand.
"The dead trees are still standing because they don't meet the guidelines for removal."
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
From the amount of downed trees that I saw in Meridian,
I doubt there's much of a market for firewood.
There were so many they couldn't give them away.
" 'ontamanures' "
LOL!
You said it much better than I did. ;o)
I'm sorry you lost such good trees.
But, you're sure set for firewood!
The wood splitter was a good investment.
I heard that!
Yeah, pine's not the best for firewood. You'd just have to grind that stuff up for mulch! My brother, in Hattiesburg, lost 27 trees on his property. My cousins were telling me that a ton of trees came down there. My sister was at her mother-in-law's, in H'burg, having evacuated from Ocean Springs, and after the storm, wanted to go over to our Aunt's house to check on her. She couldn't even drive a half a block, there were so many trees down, so she just walked the mile or so to Aunt Mary's.
We're fixing to move back to MS after 30 years away, and one of the things we're getting is a Natural Gas powered generator, so we won't be stuck without electricity and A/C after a storm! Gotta have priorities, don't ya know! ;o)
Good thing to do, the generator will save you many hours of pain. Our next project (son in law) are the metal sheets for the protection for windows.
What part of MS are you coming to?
"Ain't that the truth", said Past Your Eyes, as he looked at the X-ray of the two shattered vertebrae. :(
Sounds like the 'guidelines' are out of line.
The plan is to move to Gulfport. My friends here in MA are mystified that I'd move to a place that can be wiped out by a hurricane, but I grew up with hurricanes, so it's not unfamiliar territory. SirKit's brother lives in G'port, and my 3 sisters are all on the coast. We're looking forward to it!
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