Debris pickup in Volusia County could cost $10 million alone and the cleanup process could take weeks, county officials said Friday.
- Debris pickup, cleanup in Volusia could take weeks, cost $10M
- Volusia County, cities learned lessons from past hurricanes
- FEMA expected to pick up 75 percent of cost
- RELATED: Full coverage of Hurricane Matthew
“We are attacking it, but it is very widespread," county official George Recktenwald said. "For the county purposes, it’s spread out over the 1,200 square miles of the county.”
Right now, the county is coordinating with cities to make sure major roads are cleared before they go into neighborhoods. They learned to coordinate after experience from past hurricanes such as the three storms that slammed into Volusia County in 2004.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to pick up 75 percent of the cost of cleanup. But officials also learned it takes FEMA awhile to finish paying up, leaving a void in county coffers.
It took FEMA "probably all the way up to 2011” to pay, said Donna de Peyster, also with Volusia County. That’s seven years after those hurricanes.
County workers will pick up debris in three phases, making several rounds, asking homeowners to put out their front yard debris first, then their backyard debris. So residents could see county trucks and cranes for some time.
County officials are asking residents to help make the cleanup process faster by separating vegetation from other debris such as fences and aluminum siding.
They also said they've had to work with 500 fewer employees during this hurricane than the 2004 hurricanes, because the county was forced to downsize after a downturn in the economy in 2007 and 2008.
Workers began picking up tree trunks, branches, limbs and other debris on Wednesday.