| Here it seems the city or county does the debris removal and then if it is done in a certain amount of time, FEMA will pay for it. At least that's how the City of Tampa is doing it. I live just outside the city limits and haven't paid attention to how Hillsborough County is doing it. I just know it's going to take a long time. In some cases it might be only a few piles of debris you might get into a truck. I saw on the local news that some politicians were in my area, Town 'n' Country, doing whatever today. Basically though, it's going to take a long time. And that's just among the first steps of course. They have on the news constantly about not falling for all the scams by adjustors to contractors. If someone has a debris pile, I guess the people get inundated with solicitation of various things. Basically the advice is, trust no one. Don't sign anything. They were talking about some things where if you do sign something, there are varying periods in which you can get out of a contract. It's just all a long road to recovery for people. For me, I just have some yard debris, doesn't matter if it takes them months to get to it. We piled it in places so we can still get the car out. We took down a palm tree yesterday morning that was leaning due to Milton. Woodpeckers and maybe disease had already impacted it, so it was kind of inevitable anyway. I would say most of the larger trees around me didn't break, they just toppled. A whole lot of rain loosened the soil and it just fell over and the roots came up with it. There was one palm tree on the other side of my neighborhood that did actually snap, but quite a few others just fell over. A few more perhaps where the top of the palm tree did perhaps snap right at the top, the head of it, so that they will eventually have to come down as the top is dead now. I think the rain was why so many trees did come down. And that has done a lot of flooding around rivers. I didn't here about any more still needing to crest, so maybe they all have now, not sure. I never thought about river flooding taking a long time, maybe weeks in some cases, before you can actually start to recover. All that time you can't do anything to get stuff or begin to dry out and tear out the walls for example. I had seen that on the local news. Luckily no structural damage from trees that I have seen in my immediate area. Several instances though of just luck. A different wind direction and there would have been some big trees falling on people's houses. It's just a good idea in a place like this not to have any trees near your house. Insurance doesn't like them touching. But just look at any tree. If it fell in the wrong direction and could hit your house if it did, it needs to go. |