TIDYING UP MICHAEL’S MESS
Newport News park rangers still hard at work clearing hurricane damage
NEWPORT NEWS — Last month’s sucker punch from the remnants of Hurricane Michael left people in Virginia and the Peninsula without power, yards littered with debris and trees fallen onto roads, homes and power lines. While a sur- prise for many, crews responding to the damage had things mostly back to normal within a few days.
But in the 8,000-acre woods of Newport News Park, the buzzing of chainsaws and crack of splitting oak and hickory will be going on for months as park rangers work little by little to clear up the trees that fell during the storm.
The parks department doesn’t have an exact count, but staff said more than a couple hundred trees were damaged in the storm, mostly in the park in northern Newport News.
Superintendent of Park Operations Andy Lunsford said no storm had caused so much damage to park trees since Hurricane Isabel in 2003, which devastated the Peninsula.
Park rangers work around the clock, Lunsford said, so when Michael started to come through, rangers were out assessing damage and clearing trees and limbs from streets where they could.
By the morning after the storm, rangers, city arborists, landscape services and other staff had cleared up to 30 trees from roads and other public areas, said Rob Farrell, chief park ranger.
Roads are the first priority, then rangers turn their attention to the city’s parks and recreation property.
Lunsford said ornamental trees and some golf course trees were damaged, but nothing major happened.
But in Newport News Park, tall trees fell into roads and campsites, forcing staff to block off certain areas until they were cleared.
One of the first priorities in the park was clearing the path for the Celebration in Lights drive-thru light show that will illuminate a two-mile path in the park. After that path was cleared, the plan moving forward has been to take a couple days a week throughout the winter to work on the trees.
On Tuesday, a team of four park rangers and Lunsford worked on breaking down an uprooted tree that lay across a campsite. They made quick work of cutting it to pieces with a chainsaw and putting the rounds into a machine that split the wood into campfire-appropriate pieces. The wood will remain at the campsites for people to use when they come across it.
This tree also damaged the asphalt and left a large hole where it uprooted, so the campsite required more work to get it back to normal after the tree was cleared.
Farrell said after Isabel, rangers worked for about a month straight to clear up all the damage. Looking around the park now, many knocked down trees and cleared areas are remnants of that storm.
The work of being a part-time lumberjack is physically tiring, but Farrell enjoys the opportunity to get out of the office.
Park rangers have a wide scope of duties beyond managing their respective parks. The team of 16 rangers patrols parks, opens and closes the gates and does the odd jobs necessary to make the parks run smoothly.
They visit schools to lead nature and wildlife programs. When people spot an injured osprey, a ranger goes out to help. If there’s a snake in a garage, rangers get those calls, too. They also go through search and rescue, emergency medical and police academy training.
“In one day, you could be doing a nature program at a school, then putting someone in jail, helping an animal and splitting wood,” Farrell said. “There’s not much we don’t do. Best job in the city.”
Other Peninsula localities did not report similar amounts of damage from Hurricane Michael.
Gail Whittaker, a York County spokeswoman, said the county is working on about 1,100 collection requests for storm debris, but the storm didn’t cause much damage to county property. She said there were some trees impacted at county parks, but nothing that affected operations.
In Hampton, all damaged trees at parks and schools have been removed. Park rangers reported trees on the trails at Sandy Bottom Nature Park and at the Boo Williams Sportsplex, and the last of those were cleared last week, said David McCauley, director of parks, recreation and leisure services.