Cleaning up Tulsa's tree debris

Friday, June 4th 2004, 1:58 pm

By: News On 6

The line stretched for a mile and the wait was over an hour for all the people who needed to drop off debris from this weekâ€™s storm which roared through Tulsa. Nathaniel Pierce: â€œIt's not really worth it, but I don't really have a choice. It seems everybody with a pickup has a load of limbs.â€

At the city mulch site - hundreds of truckloads have been dumped since Wednesday. All those trees are pushed into a pile and dumped into a machine that can turn tree limbs into toothpicks. The city won't run out of mulch anytime soon. And most of the downed trees are still in neighborhoods.

The responsibility for a downed tree depends to some extent on where it falls. If it falls in the street, the city will clear it, the power company will clear it off of their lines, but if it falls in a yard, homeowners are left on their own.

It's the biggest natural disaster in Tulsa since Bill LaFortune became mayor. "This has much of the same impact as a tornado, on a larger scale." Tulsa resident: â€œMine was a Bradford pear about 20-25 years old.â€ Mayor LaFortune: â€œThis is one of 6 loads from one Bradford pear tree, amazing.â€

Tulsa lost countless thousands of trees when the storm blew through.
It was all those trees and limbs that caused most of the power outages. Stuart Solomon AEP-PSO CEO: "Trimming trees is an essential part of what we do, we have to make sure the lines stay clear and there is a balance there and we respect that but we want to make sure the power stays on for our customers."