Cleanup uneven as Myrtle Beach suggests nonprofits for downed trees

After proposing using federal funds to help low-income residents clean up downed trees, Myrtle Beach has instead turned to nonprofits to help with Matthew’s mess.

In the Oct. 11 meeting, multiple Myrtle Beach City Council members voiced support of attempting to help some residents, especially those whose homes were threatened by fallen or leaning trees, with federal grant money. However, using that money would have proven difficult, City Manager John Pedersen said. He added that creating a system to disburse money from the city’s general fund would have been overcomplicated.

“There are all sorts of issues there,” Pedersen said. “So our position has been to try to rely on the volunteer sector, where we can.”

Mayor John Rhodes, who had urged direct funding for cleanup in city council’s Oct. 11 meeting, was out of the country Monday and could not be reached by phone. Councilwoman Mary Jeffcoat said she was not disappointed that the city had changed its method of outreach, and said offering money or free services to clean up after the storm could have created a precedent of the city doing work that might have been acheived either by private means or by nonprofits.

“The staff realized that that kind of outreach is not under the purview of municipal government, that there are other entities that handle that sort of thing,” Jeffcoat said.

Recreation Youth Coordinator Ja’Net Wade, who supervised the city’s efforts handing out flyers, said that 11 students handed out over 1,000 flyers in the Booker T. Washington, Withers Swash, Ramsay Acres, Harlem and Carrie Mae Johnson neighborhoods. The flyers directed residents to the state’s 211 line for disaster relief, aid group IMPACT Ministries and the Neighborhood Services Department.

“Those kids walked hand and foot handing out those flyers door to door,” Wade said.

Fallen trees remain

The method has had mixed results, and many are still working, over two weeks after the storm, to remove downed foliage.

Janet Taylor, a renter on Hemmingway Street in the Booker T. Washington neighborhood, now has to contend with two massive entwined pine trees that fell on her garage during the storm. The fall crushed the left side of the garage completely, and trapped a car inside, she told The Sun News Wednesday.

Taylor, who said she was not home when the trees fell, now has a couple of plastic tarps covering the gap in her roof where the collapsed garage meets the rest of the house, to stop water from penetrating the main part of the home during bad weather.

“When it fell, there was not one little ornament off the wall,” Taylor said.

Down the street, nonprofit Project Rubicon, a group composed of volunteers who have experience as veterans or first responders, were chopping up a tree that had fallen in Joseph Scott’s backyard.

“They really were just out in the community,” Scott said of the group. “It was real nice.”

Conrad Sloane, a planning section chief for Project Rubicon, said the group works first-come, first-served basis from calls it receives. The group had been working on a tree in Scott’s neighbor’s yard when they decided they had the time to jump next door and help Scott.

Neither Scott nor Taylor had seen the city’s flyers. Both said they could have been gone when they were delivered.

Neighborhood Services Coordinator Edna Wright said that the students who helped were not allowed to place the flyers in mailboxes, because only items sent through the postal service or a private shipping company should be put inside one.

“Someone else in the househhold may have received it or not shared it, that’s possible,” Wright said. “Maybe they didn’t find it wherever the student left it, but I’m surprised they didn’t get it.”

Taylor had been planning to leave her home of over 20 years when she spoke with The Sun News in front of her cruched garage on Wednesday. “I filled out some applications to move,” she said.

On Monday afternoon, the trunk of the pines still sat across the garage, though many of its limbs had been cut off.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Cleanup uneven as Myrtle Beach suggests nonprofits for downed trees."