ORLANDO, Fla. — With potential trouble brewing in the Gulf of Mexico and the Thanksgiving holiday around the corner, many neighborhoods across Central Florida still have stacks of sticks and other storm waste piled outside from Hurricane Milton.
Cities and counties say their cleanup crews and contractors have been working long hours and extra days to clean up the mess – but resources are stretched thin across the southeast due to more substantial damage elsewhere.
In Orlando alone, teams have removed 50 million pounds of debris from curbsides after Milton passed through Oct. 10, including about 30 million pounds in the past two weeks, said Ashley Papagni, a city spokeswoman.
They hope to wrap up the bulk of their work by the end of the month, and ask for patience in the meantime.
“We’re doing in a day what we used to do in a week,” Alan Morrison, Orlando’s solid waste division manager told commissioners this month. “It may not look like it sometimes, just because we’re not on your street – we’re on somebody else’s street.”
A live map is available on the city’s website for residents to track the undertaking. The vast majority of the city is tagged in green, which shows the “initial debris pass” is finished, while other areas are considered a “work in progress.”
Officials are also keeping an eye on the Gulf of Mexico, where earlier in the week, models showed the possibility of a system developing into a hurricane that could impact Florida sometime next week.
However, most recent projections show the system weakening over the Yucatan peninsula, and perhaps bringing just rain to the Sunshine State – sparing residents a rare November hurricane – even as cleanup is still in progress from Milton.
In Seminole, crews have scooped nearly 91,000 cubic yards of wreckage, which is enough to fill the Epcot ball with a few thousand yards to spare.
They hope to finish up their work in about a month, said Andy Wontor, a county spokeswoman.
Orange County is roughly halfway through the removal process in unincorporated areas, with between 25 and 40 crews spread throughout the county daily to pick up piles, said Ralphetta Aker, the fiscal and operations support manager for Orange County Public Works.
The effort has been slowed in part because seven states across the southeast have been battered by hurricanes so far this year, spreading contractors to places with more severe damage than the Orlando area, she said. The county also has an interactive map that updates residents on the status of their neighborhood.
But the cleanup should be done in “roughly about a month,” Aker said.
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