EMA director: Tree report after tornado is 'a book'

Gone from the landscape of Greenfield after the tornado are hundreds of trees. Utilizing a giant shredder, a contractor is now tasked with removing the remains of those trees that have been piled at various places for the last few months.

Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Coordinator Jeremy Cooper said during an Aug. 27 city council meeting that a report was recently submitted by the Department of Natural Resource’s state forester. A spreadsheet and GPS locations keep track of which of the 502 evaluated trees is which in the report.

“It’s a book,” Cooper said of the report. “There’s a lot of information in here.”

The report accounts for any tree that still needs tended to — whether that means it needs to be removed, pruned or a stump needs taken out — either in city limits or at Lake Greenfield.

The most recent focus for the contractor taking care of this has been on removing the tree pile at the fairgrounds and hauling the remains to the Adair County Transfer Station north of Greenfield. The material then is hauled to either Mitchellville or Perry. Root balls had to be hauled separately to Malvern.

There are two different pools of insurance money that may be able to be utilized for tree work. FEMA can reimburse the city for any costs above and beyond that.

Public Works Director Brian Hoadley said there were three more trees in town that needed cut down. A lot of other tree-related projects, like trimming trees with loose limbs and removing stumps, also remain.

“My worry is winter coming early. Once it gets here and we lose all those leaves, it gets harder to identify some of those widow-makers (or detached, dead branches),” Cooper said, although he said all affected trees are marked.

“This is soley those in right-of-ways,” Cooper said. “This isn’t even including those on private property. I’m still trying to get some volunteer groups in to help folks with those.”

Cooper explained that the target date for the fairground pile to be cleaned up was the Greenfield Swap Meet, which is this weekend. The contractor would then move to Lake Greenfield.

Initial excavator work on trees at Lake Greenfield was done voluntarily already by a secondary roads crew from another county that was here helping, so there is no existing cost for that.

“There’s a lot of trees out there to take care of,” Cooper said. “I think there’s more than enough money in that pot to take care of it.”