NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Ida is long gone, but reminders of the monster storm remain.
It's everything from leaves and branches to construction debris as people rip out and rebuild.
“It's not spotty. It's everywhere. Nobody has their stuff picked up. I don't know what’s going on,” said Metairie resident Courtney Gray.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said an emergency contractor is on the streets.
But she says the sheer volume of debris means it'll be a slow pick-up process.
“This is how it goes with construction and storm debris,” she said. “It takes several weeks.”
In Jefferson Parish, contractors will make three passes to collect storm-related debris, which is separate from regular trash.
“It'll be a couple of months (before it’s all gone). Because remember, a lot of people don't even have all their storm debris out yet. Maybe they didn't hire somebody to come cut that limb off their tree, or maybe they didn't start gutting a room they needed to gut,” Sheng said. “That's why it'll take several months for the storm debris to get picked up.”
In New Orleans, city leaders estimate that they literally have tons of debris to collect off of curbs.
“Our guess was there's about 200,000 cubic yards, which is about 55,000 tons,” said Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Ramsey Green. “To date, we've cleared over 13,000 tons of debris.”
Removal began Sept. 8 and it’s far from done.
Green said there will also be three passes by crews in New Orleans, but that means it could be 60 days before everything is gone.
“You know, Zeta took us a while, and this is way bigger than Zeta,” he said. “This storm is substantially bigger than Zeta.”
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