For months, the stacks of bricks, shattered wood and other debris have grown higher and higher at the corner of Fountain and Bayard avenues.
The oblong-shaped, mixed-use property in the Fountain Park neighborhood in north St. Louis sat vacant for years before an EF3 tornado ravaged it and thousands of other homes on May 16.
Recently, on a 91-degree afternoon, Dennis Collins stood outside the building looking over the debris, trying to salvage the badly damaged building that lost a wall and its distinctive turret-style roof during the storm. He does the work for his cousin, who owns the building.
Every day, he and other workers stack more debris at the curb, waiting for crews hired by the city to take away the piles.
"Ain't nobody been out here because I've been out here every week, every day," Collins said. "I'm just waiting on the city to come out because I'm going to keep putting it out till they come."
Collins estimates that the last time he saw any sort of debris pickup was roughly three months ago in the immediate aftermath of the tornado. He said he’s seen news reports that more cleanup is on the way, but so far he’s seen little evidence in Fountain Park.
This month, St. Louis launched another round of debris cleanup after signing a contract with Mississippi-based disaster cleanup company Looks Great Services. It’s the second contract the city entered into to deal with lingering tornado debris after a former contractor struggled to handle the scope of the cleanup.
On Sept. 2, the company and subcontractors began sweeping through some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods. The city asked them to rotate neighborhoods over a three-week period, with four to eight weeks of additional cleanup afterward.
Crews focused on areas like Kingshighway East and worked through Penrose. Later, crews went into Academy/Sherman Park, O’Fallon and into the Ville and the Greater Ville.
Collins’ Fountain Park neighborhood was scheduled for cleanup during the week of Sept. 2-6. But by Sept. 22, the debris in front of the building in Fountain Park remained.
Collins said that he’s seen some progress on the outskirts of the tornado-damaged area of the city but that in Fountain Park, there’s much more to do. Some sidewalks and alleyways are still covered with debris.
“It’s making it harder for us to bounce back,” he said. “I see it on the news where they saying they going to come. They got the money to do it with, they got the equipment to do it.”
In the nearby Academy neighborhood, neighbors waited patiently during their scheduled week of cleanup, up until the final day on Sept. 13.
They gathered on the final day, as they do most Saturdays, to clean bricks for repurposing, haul debris to the curbside and more. But the day came and went with no sign of the trucks.
Late the next week, after seeing no contractors make their way through the neighborhood, one volunteer reached out to the city to complain. That very day, a truck came by, hauling away some debris — but leaving much behind. Several people in the Academy neighborhood told St. Louis Public Radio they’re unsatisfied with the results.
“The progress I have seen has been primarily from volunteers,” said Larry Powell, whose house on Kensington Avenue was rendered uninhabitable by the tornado. “The city has been woefully missing in action.”
This week, following the three-week cleanup blitz, STLPR reporters returned to many of the neighborhoods targeted by the effort. In some places, reporters could see visible progress. But lingering debris on streets, sidewalks and in alleyways — sometimes enough to block them completely — could be found throughout several neighborhoods.
Working through piles
St. Louis Chief Recovery and Neighborhood Transformation Officer Julian Nicks said he is unsure why crews missed some community routes during the first few weeks of removal. He said the city will remove tornado debris from public rights of way.
“It could have been that the trucks were running a little earlier in the neighborhood, and picked it up before it got out there,” he said. “They're a little bit behind, so they may not have swept through that particular street at the moment.”
Nicks said residents should continue separating their piles of debris and placing them on public property so contractors can eventually clear them. Concerned residents can also send requests to the Citizens’ Service Bureau.
Recently, STLPR rode through parts of north St. Louis with Adam Faust, the regional vice president for Looks Great Services, to see how the debris cleanup process is going.
In addition to their employees, Looks Great Services has subcontracted with two additional support crews who operate various types of equipment, using skid-steer and wheel-loading machines to push debris from tight alleyways to streets or curbs.
Crews also operate dump trucks to help haul debris away.
As Faust drove through the Penrose community and into the Greater Ville, he came upon one of the company’s four self-loading grapple trucks on St. Louis and Marcus avenues. They resemble two connected massive dump trucks. The self-loading truck is equipped with two large, black debris-gathering beds. A grapple sits in the middle of an attached trailer, which holds the second bed.
In total, the truck beds can hold about 200 cubic yards of debris. A standard dump truck can hold about 14 cubic yards of material. Some trucks haul away construction and demolition debris, and others strictly pull in vegetative debris. The crews drop off vegetative debris at St. Louis Composting Inc. near Baden, and construction and demolition materials at a Waste Management landfill.
Faust said his crews have worked 12-hour shifts since the beginning of September to clear out the leftover tornado debris from public rights of way. However, he said the initial cleanup efforts are running about a week behind schedule. He claimed residents are putting more debris out after the crews have passed through.
“A lot of debris is coming out as people see our trucks in the neighborhood,” Faust said. “It's kind of similar to when you see the trash truck come out the road and then you're like, ‘Oh, I better get that to the curb.’”
St. Louis city officials estimated Looks Great Services would collect 5,000 cubic yards of construction and demolition debris and 10,000 in vegetation materials during its cleanup effort. As of Sept. 22, the company reported picking up 12,000 cubic yards of construction and demolition debris and 8,000 cubic yards of vegetation debris.
“It's a really hard thing to estimate,” Faust said. “There's really no good way to estimate it because that's only what can be seen.”
Crews should be done with their first pass through all affected neighborhoods this week, but that is contingent on weather, Faust added.
“Some neighborhoods are going to go faster, and some neighborhoods are going slower — depending on the amount of debris,” he said. “We're going as fast as we possibly can to help as many people as possible.”
Looks Great Services’ contract runs through mid-October. Faust said he’s working with city officials to see if the company can bring in additional crews to help, since they are constantly seeing more debris appear when a neighborhood has been cleared.
“We'll be here as long as the city will have us here,” Faust said. “We're not trying to rush through the job. We want to get to everybody as fast as possible, but we want to make sure that we do a thorough job.”
Nicks said if the city brings in additional crews, it will not be until the later part of October to help with the final push. However, he stated there is more debris on private property than public.
Private property debris removal
The Army Corps of Engineers estimates there are 1 million tons of tornado debris that needs to be cleared off public and private property in St. Louis.
On Sept. 18, Mayor Cara Spencer announced the Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide millions to help clear debris from private properties. This comes after FEMA’s assessment of the properties that need to be removed.
“This is an enormous task, one that residents have been unable to take on themselves, and one that is so large that the city could not handle on its own as well. And so we're looking forward to the partnership here on this,” Spencer said during a news conference.
City and state officials will lead the upcoming private property removal process. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office will start by hiring a contractor, and city officials will soon begin obtaining rights of entry from homeowners who need help. FEMA and the Corps will support on-the-ground technical assistance and oversight.
There is no confirmed date for when private property debris removal will begin. However, Nicks said residents should start preparing now.
“If they have issues with their title clearances, they'll need to get that sorted out and handled,” he said. “A prerequisite for us to be able to come on any property is that the title needs to be in your name, and we know that's been an issue because it's been an issue with people getting FEMA aid.”
If residents have red-tagged homes with pertinent documents inside, they should reach out to the city’s Recorder of Deeds office or to Legal Services of Eastern Missouri for help with replacements.
“The city and the state, with our FEMA partners, are moving as fast as we can, but then we also know that it's not fast enough for people kind of directly in those communities,” Nicks said. “The one thing we want to give is reassurance that we are invested in making sure all debris is removed (from) these communities.”
St. Louis Public Radio's Hiba Ahmad contributed to this story.
