In February, trees in cities and towns across the state crashed down after a devastating ice storm. Months later, several cities in Oregon are still dealing with tree damage from the storm. We hear from Megan Big John, parks manager for Lake Oswego Parks & Recreation, and Mark Becktel, Salem’s public works operations manager, on how tree damage can create new issues, especially as fire season begins in Oregon.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last February, countless trees across western Oregon crashed down in a devastating ice storm. Four months later, several cities are still dealing with tree damage and cleanup. They are racing against a fire season that has already begun and winter winds that are on their way. For more on this I’m joined by Megan Big John who is the parks manager for Lake Oswego Parks and Recreation and Mark Becktel. He is Salem’s public works operations manager. Welcome to you both. Megan Big John first. What did damage from that February ice storm look like in Lake Oswego?
Megan Big John: It was quite devastating. I had never seen anything like that. I’ve lived here my whole life and it was quite impressive. It was amazing with how many trees and branches were down.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the work in the immediate aftermath? I mean, what was happening?
Big John: Our city came together as a whole in our first mission, to help the public works department get all the streets open. So our park staff worked with them directly. And, at the same time, we needed to close the majority of parks to public access because we didn’t have time to assess the damage. So it was all hands on deck as we got back to work the next day.
Miller: What was the fear in terms of those parks as they took second priority to the roads? Why close the parks? What were you afraid of?
Big John: The parks have always been popular but with Covid, we’ve had a lot more people coming through them. We wanted to keep people out so we could keep them safe.
Miller: From trees or limbs falling on them? Was that the biggest immediate concern?
Big John: Yes, exactly. There were things you didn’t know were falling or that could be falling as ice was melting and things were kind of coming out of the ice.
Miller: And Mark Becktel in Salem, can you remind us what things looked like right after that storm?
Becktel: Very similar to what Megan said. It was quite devastating after 36 hours of freezing rain in the town. We had a tremendous amount of damage to our tree canopy both on publicly owned street and park trees as well as the privately owned trees in the community.
Miller: Do you have a sense for the percentage of trees or percentage of that canopy seriously damaged?
Becktel: Our initial estimate now is about 5% of the total tree canopy suffered either damage or destruction due to the storm.
Miller: One in 20 trees in the city of Salem were either damaged or destroyed.
Becktel: That’s an amazing number and it really created a problem with accessing our streets. Virtually every street was either blocked or partially blocked by downed limbs, branches and trees. Our parks had the same problems that Megan discussed. A lot of trees came down in our creeks and streams. Salem is a city of streams and creeks and many of them became blocked with downed tree branches.
Miller: So in Lake Oswego after the immediate clearance, allowing people[to]travel on streets again, what was next on your to-do list?
Big John: Our next thing to do was get the parks opened. Because we had extensive power outages in Lake Oswego most everybody was home. Working with our park staff we went through each park and identified the largest hazards and tried to get trees down. You try to be systematic, [but] we were also still responding to calls from citizens who had trees coming down. So it was kind of like working spherically through the department, a park, a citizen, the street department, or PG&E trying to get the power back up.
Miller: How much of this work can you do inhouse, either in the city’s Parks and Recreation Department or other city staff [for]tree crews.
Big John: We have essentially not stopped since that February day. Our natural areas crew especially has been trying to reduce some of the matter that’s been down. And then we have multiple tree companies hired out to be able to come and help us because when it comes to tree climbing, we have to contract that out. And as probably everybody knows, there’s only so many tree companies with climbers. So they’re still going to [have] continuous work for a long time to come.
Miller: So it’s been challenging hiring enough contractors just because everybody wants his work done at the same time?
Big John: Correct. It’s a skill to have a climber that goes up. So we’ve been working on the ground crews and trying to get trees that are down. But [we’ve been] coordinating with the contractor crews who were already booked out before the storm hit. A lot of contractors are booked out now through September, working privately and helping agencies like ours.
Miller: Mark Becktel, what is the work that’s going on right now in Salem?
Becktel: We also only have a very small inhouse work force. We have one permanent tree crew and we put together a second provisional tree crew. So we’re also dependent on contractors. We were fortunate to have two rather large tree service companies on contract previous to the storm. So we had up to 10 separate tree crews assisting the two city crews and our own ground crews as well. But yeah, we have been working nonstop and while we have begun to reduce the number of tree crews, we are still working along the streets and in parks to get what we call the hangers, which are those branches that are still broken but are hung up in the trees and pose a safety threat.
Miller: What is the time pressure that you’re both feeling right now? Mark Becktel, when you look at the calendar and you look at the work left to be done, what goes through your mind?
Becktel: We want to make sure that the tree canopy is as safe as possible as soon as possible. Then there’s the seasonality of the work that involves trees. We would like to get out and begin grinding the stumps of the trees that had to be taken down and then begin replanting and the fall is a great time to plant trees. So that’s one timeline. And as you mentioned, it won’t be long until [winter is] here again and we will hopefully not have to go through this again. But we need to be prepared in case we do.
Miller: Megan Big John what about you? I mean what goes through your mind when you look at the calendar?
Big John: We’ve got the same list as Mark. But an extra layer is that everybody saw the trees down with the concern of fire we had all last summer. We’ve been strategically, during the [park] cleanup, trying to create some defensible space and firebreaks within our trail system and our perimeters. [We are] working very closely with our fire department.
I have September as [the end of] one phase to relieve some of the debris that’s down and secondly, getting to all the trees we can before the wind and the rains hit in the winter.
Miller: Mark Becktel, can you give us a sense for the scale of the debris, the branches, limbs and maybe even full trees that you and the city of Salem have cleared away so far?
Becktel: Yeah, the numbers are amazing. If you look at just the publicly owned trees, the street trees and the parks trees, we collected or dealt with 18,000 tons of, essentially, timber. Much of it was kept as timber that we could then take to be milled. Much of it was also made into firewood using the Marion County Juvenile Services. The rest was chipped and now we have about 1.2 million pounds of wood chips which we are desperately giving away here in Salem,
Miller: Just for free. You mean you don’t know what to do with a pile that big?
Becktel: We actually have several mountains of wood chips. We are giving it away at a couple different locations in Salem where people can come and load up their vehicles with free wood chips. We’re using it as bedding material in the parks. And I guarantee you we’ll be resurfacing every soft trail this entire summer with new wood chips.
Miller: And you actually sent some logs to be milled as a city. And what are you going to do with the planks that you got in return?
Becktel: Well, we haven’t sent them yet but we plan to. Some of the things we’ve had in mind are making some park benches or for our [park] shelters. We are thinking about trying to memorialize this storm, the most destructive we’ve had in Salem since the 1964 Columbus Day storm.
Miller: And so you’re thinking about using some of the wood that came down in the storm to build a memorial?
Becktel: Things that people could remember the storm with, like benches or picnic shelters.
Miller: Megan Big John it seems that you are struggling to do all this clean up as fast as you can, even though Lake Oswego is known as one of the wealthiest communities in the state. What does that tell you? Where do you think that leaves communities that don’t have anywhere close to the tax base that you have?
Big John: You can throw a whole bunch of labour and manpower at [the problem] if you have the money, but there is a force that you’re needing [of] skilled labor to come in to do some of that work. One thing that has been really heartwarming is that we have volunteers. We have nine friends groups who help us with restoration work in our natural areas and we’ve had other groups that have reached out to help us with this clean up. It’s been a real community effort helping continue this cleanup and helping reduce the concerns of fire for the future. I think all those work parties will continue on throughout the year. So it’s been really nice to know that we’re not alone.
Miller: Megan Big John and Mark Becktel, thanks very much for joining us. Best of luck to both of you. Megan Big John is a certified arborist and the parks manager for Lake Oswego Parks and Recreation. Mark Becktel is public works operations manager for the City of Salem.
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