Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
December 18, 2006
If you haven’t been by the storm debris drop-off site lately, there are many large piles of limbs. We started burning the limbs on Thursday and it will take a while to get through everything.
Here are some photos of the debris pile and the special blowers that are used to stoke the fire.
These two photos demonstrate the magnitude of the debris that has been collected. We have a lot more limbs than when we opened the drop-off site after the wind storm last July.
This is the diesel powered blower engine and blower located at the side of the burn pit. The burn pit is right of this picture.
This is the business end of the blower assembly, mounted at the edge of the burn pit. The debris pile is right of this picture, allowing loading of pit from the pile. The air from the diesel powered unit is directed down the wall of the pit, greatly increasing the burning efficiency.
We have received some calls from residents concerned about about the smoke in the air. Since the limbs are wet and green, they tend to smoke more. You may recall that the burn pit smoke from last July's storm was almost nonexistent and we used the same process as now. The limbs in July were a lot drier and probably consisted of more dead wood.
Due to the volume of limbs collected, we do not have many options other than burning. We would like for the wood to burn faster and are doing everything in our power to make it burn as hot and clean as possible. The good news is this is a temporary situation and we will be done soon.
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