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In April of 2007, a powerful windstorm
devastated the forests of Long Island, Maine.
With the assistance of FEMA, the town developed a Debris Removal Plan.
Coleman Clarke: The trees are 80 to 100 feet tall; beautiful,
straight, nice spruce trees and they just -
because they're so tall - at the sustained
winds of 85 miles per hour, it's just like dominos. They just blew right over.
We're removing the debris, at the same time,
we're taking it and putting it into
different resources. The logs are going to a
mill, to become, you know, another
product: lumber or furniture or whatever it
goes to. The chips are going to bio-mass to
make electricity and then
the pulpwood is going to make paper.
At the same time we're doing this, we're
removing the fire danger, we're reducing the
danger and it's also going to jumpstart the
regrowth of the forest because we've removed all that material off the properties.
The debris plan is, we - on the
recommendation of the Maine Forest Service -
we hired a forester and then we worked with Hank Gallant from FEMA.
Hank Gallant: Okay, when I first got to Long Island and
Dickie Clarke took me around, I could
See that they had a very serious potential
problem in a fire situation because
if a fire started from a lightening strike or
anything like that, you'd have
difficulty getting the people off the island. It was a very serious problem.
Coleman Clarke: Hank has been very supportive in helping me,
you know, guide me in the right
places to go to get the information to go ahead.
So we hired a forester. The forester came
down and did a tour of the island. He
came up with a plan that basically outlines -
because of the way the debris is -
Is to do a conventional logging operation
which includes handcutters and
skidders to bring the debris out. And then
we've taken it to a central logging
yard to stockpile and process before we ship it off the island.
Every time I think of it, it really
amazes me how we put this together. It's pretty cool.
For more information visit www.fema.gov.