The day is rapidly approaching when Hamilton County will no longer pick up brush and debris still littering the East Hamilton area in the wake of the April 27 tornado.
“There is going to have to be a date given, I just don’t know what that date is going to be,” said Gary Bean, superintendent of the county’s Highway Department. “I think people are getting to the point they know that what needed to be done has been done. Whatever is left now they pretty much know they have to burn it.”
After the tornado, Bean’s department was relegated to picking up brush along the 880 miles of roads in the county’s unincorporated areas that it normally maintains in other ways. The county does not normally offer brush pickup.
Federal Emergency Management Agency will set the date when that ends – “a time that’s reasonable to clean it up around those houses” that were affected. After that, “it’s going to be on the county’s dime.”
Even during this allotted phase of work, Bean stressed that FEMA will only reimburse the county for expenses to haul off brush cleared within 100 feet of houses. Many people in the Apison area have entire acres of trees that came down in the storm.