MetroParks looking to help replant trees lost in tornadoes
MetroParks official: ‘It will take a long time to replace them.’
Across the region, property owners and volunteers continue to cut up and remove thousands of trees destroyed by the Memorial Day tornadoes. Help may be on the way to replace some of those trees, but it won’t come immediately.
Five Rivers MetroParks is looking to develop a program to help re-establish trees throughout the region, according to Chris Pion, Five Rivers MetroParks’ director of parks and conservation.
“We are at the initial points of these conversations,” Pion said. “It is going to take us a little while to establish what to do to help (the community) long-term. We are really working on some ideas of how we can help.”
There are no overall estimates of the number of trees damaged, but it is expected to be in the tens of thousands across Montgomery, Greene, Miami and other counties hit by the storms.
“We are going to do what we can to rehabilitate the habitats and help the community,” Pion said. “We are not 100 percent sure how that is going to look, but we are going to come up with a strategy.”
Kristen Wicker, Five Rivers’ marketing manager, said helping the region regrow trees is part of the park service’s mission.
As a conservation agency, Five Rivers wants to assist with reforestation of areas impacted by the tornadoes, she said.
“That is at the heart of everything we do. It is important that we be apart of that conservation,” she said.
In the days after the tornadoes hit, dump trucks from all across the region brought never-ending loads of tree trunks and limbs to trash sites.
That work continues even three weeks later.
The city of Dayton alone estimates the tornadoes knocked down 1,400 trees that blocked right-of-ways after the storms.
In Brookville, Sonja Keaton, the acting city manager, said approximately 2,000 yards of tree debris had been hauled away just in the early days after the tornadoes.
In Harrison Twp. the old Forest Park shopping center site was used to temporarily hold debris. About 300 loads were taken there alone the Wednesday after the tornadoes, the vast majority of it tree debris, according said Kris McClintick, Harrison Twp. administrator.
The Solid Waste District’s transfer facility saw a 3,000ton increase in waste during the week after the tornadoes.
Yard waste and brush disposal is free for Montgomery County residents at the Solid Waste District, 1001 Encrete Lane, Moraine. It must be clean and free of trash and debris and no more than 24 inches in diameter. No stumps are allowed.
One of the largest collection of trees destroyed by the Memorial Day tornadoes was at the 88-acre Wegerzyn Gar- den MetroPark in Dayton.
Hundreds of bur oaks, sil- ver maples, sycamores and other trees — some planted generations ago — were broken in two or snatched up, roots and all.
“We lost some of the oldest native trees in our area,” Pion said. “It will take a long time to replace them.”
MetroParks is still evalu- ating damage at Wegerzyn as well as Shoup Mill Conservation Area, located near Frederick Pike and Shoup Mill Road, and the Need- more Conservation Area, located near Needmore and Old Troy Pike.
Pion said animal and plant life in the hardest hit section of Wegerzyn and the conser- vation areas will need help as well.
“In areas where every tree is down, it is going to be difficult for that habitat to rebound (on its own),” he said. “We are going to have to come up with a way to help the environment heal.”
The park has budgeted for improvements and repairs, but could not plan for such a natural disaster, he added. Pion hopes that FEMA will provide some financial assistance. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump declared the region as a disaster area, which will open up some federal funds.
Wicker said the park district has not finished assessing how much has been spent thus far to mitigate tornado damage. Wegerzyn reopened June 10, two weeks after the most ferocious of the 15 Memorial Day tornadoes hit it at a vertical angle that went over Jay Lake and into the park’s swamp and woods.
It was critical to get the park, a popular attraction in one of the hardest hit areas of the Miami Valley, reopened, Pion said. “One of the biggest things that we can do is to provide this place for people to come to relax and heal themselves,” he said.
Some of Wegerzyn’s most beloved parts were spared from the monstrous tornado that ebbed between EF3 and EF4 as it traveled from Brookville to Trotwood, to Harrison Twp. to Dayton and then to Riverside.
Pion said Wegerzyn’s Children’s Discovery Garden and administration building were virtually untouched.
Using the top of damaged trees as markers, Pion pointed out the clear path the tornado took as it ripped through the park. “I’ve never seen storm damage that comes close to the magni- tude that came through with the tornado,” he said.
The wooden bridge in the Swamp Forest was smashed by giant trees. At one point near the middle it is caved in and nearly halved.
“We are going to have to do some serious inspection to see what is broken,” he said. “It is going to remain closed for a while.”
The Marie Aull Trail will remain closed until dangerous branches can be taken out. Pion said the road leading to the park’s 355-plot community garden was eight feet deep in downed trees.
A Montgomery County sewer pump station building was smashed. Much of the canopy of trees that surrounded the community garden and a section of parkland managed by the city of Dayton are gone.
“When you think about the age of the trees, that are lost, that is not something that can be easily replaced, Pion said.